Milosevic cruelty 'unimaginable'

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- An elderly Kosovo farmer has accused Slobodan Milosevic at the former Yugoslav leader's war crimes trial of "unimaginable" cruelty towards ethnic Albanians.

Fehim Elshani, a Kosovar Albanian farmer told war crimes judges on Thursday how he survived a Serb onslaught on his village that left a pile of maimed bodies in his front yard.

Elshani, 67, testifying in the trial of Milosevic, said Serb soldiers shelled, then stormed the 100-house town of Nogavac, "herding up large numbers of people."

Several were killed, and thousands were forced to leave, he said.

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"They wanted to commit genocide," he told the U.N. court. "They came to exterminate them."

Elshani is the second farmer to describe alleged war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the spring of 1999.

The witness sat uneasily just a few metres from the once-powerful Balkan's strongman, charged for the murder of thousands and the expulsion of 800,000 people from the Serbian province.

Milosevic is accused of crimes against humanity in Kosovo. He faces similar charges for Croatia in 1991-2 and is charged with genocide, the gravest of all crimes, during the 1992-5 Bosnian war.

Elshani said he was asleep with his wife when explosions caused by Serb troops shook his two-storey farmhouse "breaking all the glass in the house."

"There were seven dead people beside the craters," he said.

The couple hid in the basement to escape the attackers, but a Serb policeman came into the house to find them.

"'Now I will cut your throat like a sheep,"' Elshani quoted the soldier as having said. "He took his knife and tried to massacre me."

They were saved when two Serb policemen who knew him entered the house calling: "'Uncle Fahim, do you know me?"'

Milosevic grilled Elshani with questions intending to show that the Serbs had not attacked civilians but were defending themselves from rebel forces of the KLA. Milosevic suggested the Serbs had been trying to help the local population to safety.

The witness was unwavering in his position that the Serbs were there to rid the area of the non-Serb population

"If that is what you call help, what would the other be?" he asked. "You burned three old women. It is unimaginable the things that you have done."

Earlier the war crimes trial took an unexpected turn when a key witness said he was too ill to finish his testimony.

Farmer Agim Zeqiri, who had been giving evidence about "ethnic cleansing" killings, was excused by the court before the former Yugoslav president was able to complete his cross-examination.

Milosevic was clearly irritated by the early dismissal, lifting his hand in a gesture of frustration as the witness left the courtroom on day eight of the trial.

U.N. tribunal presiding judge Richard May said the circumstances would be taken into consideration in judging the testimony.

Zeqiri, 49, had told the U.N. court on Wednesday that Serb attackers killed 16 members of his family as forces allegedly under Milosevic's control plundered, raped and burned Albanian villages throughout the region.

Despite Milosevic's failure to recognise the legitimacy of the U.N. tribunal, he has played an active role in his case.

His cross-examinations of the first three prosecution witnesses pointed out inconsistencies in testimony as he attempted to defend the actions of the Serb forces acting in Kosovo.