DATE=2/28/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=YUGOSLAV WAR CRIMES (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-259632
BYLINE=LAUREN COMITEAU
DATELINE=THE HAGUE
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Four Bosnian Serbs accused of murder, torture
and persecution went on trial today/Monday at the
Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. The men
include three commanders of the Omarska prison camp in
northwest Bosnia, one of three camps where prosecutors
say thousands of Muslims and Croats died in 1992.
Lauren Comiteau has more from The Hague.
TEXT: Prosecutor Grant Niemann says this is a case of
ethnic cleansing and persecution on a massive scale.
He said it was a well planned and orchestrated
campaign of terror by ethnocentric fanatic
nationalists loyal to the self-declared Serb Republic.
/// ACT NIEMANN ///
It was this puppet entity, dangling from the
strings of (Yugoslav President) Slobodan
Milosevic that turned its police and military
forces upon its own people in a quest to
participate in the grand achievement of an
ethnically pure, greater Serbia.
/// END ACT ///
That kind of savage, brutal and inhumane campaign of
terror, says Mr. Niemann, had not been seen in
Europe since World War Two.
Prosecutor Niemann then went on to show pictures of
emaciated men behind the barbed wire of one of the
camps - pictures, said Mr. Niemann, that shocked the
world when they were first reported eight years ago.
Prosecutors say the bulk of the evidence in this case
will focus on the three camps, which they called the
instruments of the Bosnian Serbs' policy of
persecution.
The men on trial may not have drawn up the plans,
but prosecutors say without them they could not have
been achieved. One year after the camps were set up,
the Muslim population of the town of Priador was
reduced by 90 per cent.
The trial is expected to last several months. (Signed)
NEB/LC/GE/KL
28-Feb-2000 10:26 AM EDT (28-Feb-2000 1526 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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