Milosevic trial told of war horrors

Milosevic sat impassively during the witness account of atrocities

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic has heard a horrific witness account of the atrocities committed in Kosovo during the war.

The witness told how Serb forces sliced off limbs, split open skulls and gouged out the eyes of Kosovo Albanian villagers.

Mutilated and naked bodies were left in piles in ethnic Albanian villages, Sabit Kadriu said.

Kadriu, a Kosovo Albanian human rights activist, visited the site of atrocities in the north-western Cicavica region of Kosovo in September 1998.

He said: "People were mutilated. It was really terrible.

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"There were young people who were mutilated.

"They had stuck their eyes out and they had cut off parts of their bodies. The crime was committed with knives."

Among the atrocities Kadriu discovered, while working for the Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms, were bodies of people whose skulls had been cracked open.

"They had been hit on the head with a hammer and their brains were scattered all around," he said.

Giving evidence to the court in The Hague on Thursday, he said he saw 14 naked bodies in Galica piled on top of each other and found similar scenes in the villages of Osljan, Zilivode, Bivoljak.

The Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms compiled information on numerous atrocities, including the rape, killing and mutilation of eight women in a village on 30th May 1999.

Kadriu said: "Some of them did not have fingers. Fingers were cut off and some bodies lacked certain limbs."

He said that in March 1999, following the bombing by NATO, the Serbs mounted a retaliation against the local populace.

He said: "Serbs started gathering, looting and torching homes of Albanians. The burning went on until late at night."

He said police went house-to-house, telling villagers to leave Kosovo. "They set a 17th century mosque in downtown Vucitrn on fire, shouting 'Allah, Allah' as the flames rose."

Milosevic, who has been charged with five counts of murder, deportation and persecution in the Serbian province in 1999, listened impassively as Kadriu chronicled the catalogue of grisly evidence.

The former Yugoslav leader also faces another 61 counts of war crimes, including genocide, stemming from the Croatian and Bosnian wars between 1991 and 1995.

He is defending himself and has refused to enter a plea, forcing the court to enter a not guilty plea on his behalf.

The trial is regarded as the most important war crimes trial since the aftermath of World War II.

On Wednesday, Milosevic was told he must remain in custody despite an application for temporary release.

Judge rejected his application for temporary freedom in order to prepare a more effective defence.

"The trial has already commenced and the trial chamber is not satisfied that if he were released he would continue to appear for trial and would not pose a danger to any victim, witness or others," presiding judge Richard May said.