Milosevic in grisly photo rebuttal

Milosevic used photos of charred corpses to lambast NATO's bombing campaign

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CNN) -- Backed by a series of gruesome photos, Slobodan Milosevic has accused NATO of waging war on Yugoslavia based on "an ocean of lies."

Launching his defence against war crimes charges, the 60-year-old former Yugoslav leader justified his actions in Kosovo as a "struggle against terrorism," and said he was a victim of twisted facts and "terrible fabrication."

Milosevic faces a total of 66 counts of genocide and other war crimes relating to a decade of strife in the republics that once made up Yugoslavia. Each count carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

He began giving evidence in his defence on the third day of his trial at the U.N. court at The Hague by showing a video recording of a German TV documentary.

It included a comment from a German general saying he was ashamed of his government during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

VIDEO Milosevic challenges the legitimacy of the international court. CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports (February 13) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)   MORE STORIES • Key quotes: Milosevic  • 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 Alessio Vinci reports  • On the scene: Christiane Amanpour: Classic Milosevic    CNN.com Europe More news  from our European edition

"This is just an atom ... in an ocean of lies ... against my country," Milosevic said following the video.

"Civilian targets," Milosevic said, "were NATO's main targets," pointing to the deaths of women, children and the elderly.

"They hit many more hospitals than they did tanks. They hit many more schools than they did tanks."

He provided photographs of his claims, showing grisly images of severed body parts and charred corpses he said were ethnic Albanians killed during the bombing of Kosovo on April 14 when they were returning to their homes. The bombing occurred near Djakovica.

"Everybody could see they were civilians and peasants in their carts," Milosevic said. "They were intentionally targeted... They were targeted because they were going back to their village."

He said there were pamphlets dropped out of airplanes urging civilians to flee. He said the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) killed heads of families who disobeyed orders to flee.

Other examples of bombings were presented by Milosevic, who provided photos of corpses and of schools, centres, houses and other buildings in Serbia that were bombed.

CNN's Alessio Vinci in Belgrade said that Milosevic was aiming at a domestic Serb audience in Yugoslavia.

"He is trying to shift attention to the fact that Serb people suffered and that this trial is not a trial against himself but a trial against his nation."

Milosevic said the 1999 NATO bombing campaign was "the product of propaganda and the abuse of global media as a means of war against my country."

He attacked his trial and the NATO bombing of his country as "an outrage against a whole nation and a whole people."

"This whole thing is a manipulation, a fabrication," the former Yugoslav leader said. In contrast he said Serbs had mounted "a heroic defence" of their country.

CNN's Alessio Vinci says Milosevic was aiming mostly at his Yugoslav audience

Milosevic argued that mass deaths in Kosovo did not begin until the NATO bombing. He said the western intervention was contrived and "concocted," and that there had been no human disaster in Kosovo, as claimed by the west, until the bombing began.

He denied that Serb military forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians, and said they actually had fled the KLA and the NATO bombing.

"When people were fleeing from these places of conflict, this is called deportation," he said. "They want to make me accountable for the crimes they perpetrated themselves."

He also branded the Serb opponents who defeated him in 2000 elections as a "puppet regime" of the West and accused the media of inherent bias.

"This is a crime against the truth. This is a competition between justice and injustice," he told the court's three scarlet and black-robed judges facing him across the austere modern courtroom.

Milosevic, who pointed his figer and thumped the desk at times as he spoke, said the case was not against him alone but against the whole Serbian people. "Our citizens stand accused, citizens who lent their massive support to me," he said. "My conduct was an expression of the will of the people," he said.

Milosevic said he was only defending his country and his people, arguing he was waging a war on terrorism.

"The Americans go right [to] the other side of the globe to fight terrorism in Afghanistan... and that is considered to be logical and normal," Milosevic said.

A prisoner at Trnopolje detention camp, Bosnia, in 1992

"Whereas here (at the war crimes tribunal), the struggle against terrorism in the heart (of) one's own country... is considered to be a crime. That means that you are not master in own home."

The video presented by Milosevic, a documentary prepared by German ARD television, claimed Serbs were massacred in Kosovo, and that the NATO campaign was "a violation of international law in which innocent civilians lost their lives."

The video alleged that western propaganda was designed to solidify public opinion behind the campaign, especially in Germany. It showed interviews with German officials who dissented from the western policy toward Yugoslavia.

The Thursday session later adjourned and Milosevic will continue his opening remarks on Friday.

On the first two days of the trial prosecutors detailed their case against Milosevic.

They said he was responsible for the deportation of millions of non-Serbs and the killing of hundreds of thousands more during the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, in a brutal campaign to entrench his own personal power.

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

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 is the first head of state to be called to justice before an international tribunal. His case is the most prominent war crimes trial since military tribunals tried the leaders of Nazi Germany and Japan after World War II.