The mammoth war crimes trial of six former top Serbian officials and close allies of late Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, accused of atrocities committed by Serb troops during the 1998-99 crackdown on Kosovo, started at the UN court yesterday.
"In 1999 Kosovo was prominent in international headlines and video images of conflict and convoys of thousands of Kosovo Albanian refugees. We are going to explain why," prosecutor Thomas Hannis said.
In the dock alongside ex-Serbian president Milan Milutinovic are the former Serbian prime minister, Nikola Sainovic, two former Yugoslav army chiefs of staff -- generals Dragoljub Ojdanic and Nebojsa Pavkovic -- and generals Vladimir Lazarevic and Sreten Lukic.
"We say the evidence will show that these six accused were co-perpetrators with Slobodan Milosevic in a joint criminal enterprise ... the aim of which was to ensure continued Serbian control over the province," he added.
Following the Milosevic's death in March, the Milutinovic case has become pivotal for establishing what happened in Serbia's mainly ethnic-Albanian province of Kosovo from a legal point of view.
Much of the evidence to be presented is expected to be similar to the prosecution's Kosovo case in the Milosevic trial.
The former Yugoslav president died suddenly on March 11 and his trial, the first to deal with the alleged Serb atrocities committed during the Kosovo war, was closed without the judges ruling on the evidence presented.
The men on trial Monday face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the forced deportation of some 800,000 Kosovo Albanian civilians, the murder of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians, including women and children, sexual assaults by Serb troops and the destruction of Kosovo Albanian religious sites. They have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecution's opening statement yesterday included a short lesson in Kosovo history outlining the importance the province holds for the Serbs. In the 1990s before armed conflict flared up, they said, Serbia had already tried by several means "to alter the ethnic balance in favor of Serbs in Kosovo."
The Serb crackdown on Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 left hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians internally displaced or forced them to flee to neighbouring countries like Albania and Macedonia.
Then Yugoslav president Milosevic and Serb authorities have always maintained they were were taking legitimate action against the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which they branded a terrorist group.
In March 1999 after peace talks collapsed, NATO launched air strikes against targets in Serbia and Kosovo to force the Serb troops to retreat.
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