Court hears Serb rampage evidence

Milosevic re-stated his belief that NATO and the KLA were the aggressors

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Serb forces laid waste to Kosovo Albanian villages killing women and children in their path, the Slobodan Milosevic war crimes tribunal has heard.

But Milosevic accused the prosecution of providing false witnesses to divert attention away from the true aggressors -- the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army and NATO.

Milosevic is on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Kosovo, in Croatia in 1991-2 and genocide in Bosnia in 1992-5. He has refused to plead but the court has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Agron Berisha, a doctor from the town of Suva Reka, told the tribunal of a massacre in which many of his relatives had died.

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He said survivors had told him how Serb police "emptied their magazines" and burned down a house where Kosovo Albanians were hiding.

"Policemen shot pitilessly with automatic weapons and threw grenades at them. Trucks came and loaded up 40 to 50 bodies and took them towards Prizren.

"The police emptied their magazines into their bodies.

"The house was enveloped in flames. The rafters began to fall on the bodies, which were enveloped in flames so the bodies were buried," Berisha said.

Another Kosovo Albanian -- retired farmer Halil Morina -- said Serbs torched three-quarters of his village in March 1999 after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia.

He told the tribunal that Serb forces burned a paralysed ethnic Albanian woman alive in her home, murdered a toddler and blew up a mosque during their crackdown on Kosovo.

Morina said he and some other villagers managed to escape the orgy of violence but on his return to village he could not find any survivors.

"Only the livestock remained. Everything had been razed to the ground.

"First I went to a neighbouring house and saw the 13 dead bodies lying on the floor. Then I searched other houses to see if there was anyone left and we didn't find anyone."

Milosevic, who is able to cross-examine witnesses as he is carrying out his own defence, has been trying to build the case that Serb troops were acting in self-defence against KLA aggression.

When Morina denied knowing of any KLA activity near his village Milosevic told Judge Richard May: "These are false witnesses. They are being used to pull out the pieces from the mosaic of war in Yugoslavia."