Milosevic as Defense Lawyer

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002
He may not have hired a lawyer, but Slobodan Milosevic is acting as his own defense attorney in court. In an aggressive cross-examination that sought to discredit the prosecution's first witness, he questioned Kosovo Albanian political leader for almost four hours, twice as long as prosecutors. Bakali testified Monday about the "apartheid state" Serb leaders imposed on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians after Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power. He also testified that during his meetings with the former president, he informed Milosevic that Serb forces were committing crimes against ethnic Albanians, particularly the 1998 massacre of the Jashari family. Mahmut Bakali testified that Milsoevic knew about the crimes.

In court Tuesday, a well-prepared Milsoevic questioned Bakali on all those incidents. Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch called the former President's cross-examination a solid, forceful and accomplished performance. "What we saw today was Slobodan Milsoevic mounting a vigorous cross-examination of a prosecution witness, and that kind of cross-examination is a hallmark of a fair trial," said Dicker. "I think what we saw today in broader terms was justice. This is what fair trials look like."

But Dicker says despite the vigorous questioning, he doesn't believe Milsoevic discredited Mahmut Bakali's basic assertion about the apartheid state Albanians were living under during Milosevic's rule. In often heated exchanges with Bakali, Milosevic tried to portray the attack on the Jashari family as a defense against terrorism. He also tried to show that the exodus of 800,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo — a crime prosecutors attribute to him — was because of NATO bombs and Albanian terrorists, who Milosevic says forced them to leave.

It's a charge Bakali flatly denied, saying even his own family was forced to flee Kosovo. Switching from his native Albanian, he addressed the former President in Serbo-Croat, saying, "You, Mr. Milosevic, destroyed Yugoslavia and the very idea of Yugoslavia."

Milosevic went on to ask if the same terrorist forces were still committing crimes against Serbs in southern Serbia and Macedonia. That prompted Judge Richard May, who appeared to grant Milsoevic much leeway in his questioning, to ask what the relevance is between what's happening today and the three-year old crimes he is charged with. Milosevic responded that it is relevant because "it is a protracted crime that we're dealing with . . . a pooling of crimes, an association and joinder of crimes . . . [which] is continuing and that is why it is relevant and linked to what we are talking about."

His answer is the mirror image of prosecutor's charges, which say it was Milosevic who acted in a "joint criminal enterprise" to commit crimes in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia, all part of what they call the "same transaction." Judge May let him continue.

These divergent views of what happened in the Balkans will no doubt be heard again throughout the trial, which resumes with prosecution investigators giving their version of events. Milosevic may say, as he repeated in court, that this is not a real trial. But as his first cross-examination made clear, he is now an active participant in a process he still refuses to recognize.