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“SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IS A CRIMINAL” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S8448-S8450 on July 17, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IS A CRIMINAL
Mr. D'AMATO. Madam President, for too long now, the world has been watching a terrible carnage take place with the changing of the former Yugoslavia, with the various factions fighting for autonomy, with the deterioration of respect for human life being so obvious, that we almost take it as a matter of fact when people are massacred, and we hear that the atrocities reach incredible levels.
It becomes commonplace to hear of tens of thousands of people who can no longer live in their homes. Indeed, estimates are that 3 million people have been forced to move. They call it ``ethnic cleansing.'' Despite the best attempts by the United States and some of our allies, we have been unable to bring about some resolve. Tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops are now positioned in Bosnia to attempt to keep the conflict from again affecting the lives of the innocent--women and children, people who are held hostage, people who are abducted, women who are raped, young men who are killed because of their ethnic background. It is incredible. Muslims are killed because they are Muslims. Croats are killed because they are Croats. Serbs are killed because they are Serbs. The madness that exists in this day and age is incomprehensible.
Madam President, the situation is not getting better. The situation is deteriorating. And behind it all, the motivator, the prime mover in all of this, is one man. That doesn't mean that there aren't others who are responsible on all of the sides for having had their people undertake horrific acts against humanity. But there is one person--a hard-core Communist dictator who has been able to keep power by way of appealing to the worst prejudices of people--by the name of Slobodan Milosevic. He would like to think of himself as a duly-elected President. He is the last surviving Communist leader still in power from before the wall fell. Make no mistake about it, although he may call himself a President, but he is a criminal, he is a thug, and he has been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including his own people. This is the man, the thug, the killer.
Indeed, the resolution that I, Senator Lieberman, and a number of our colleagues, including the present Presiding Officer, have worked on is one that deals with this thug. It is one that will call for the United States and others to gather the factual information necessary to pursue a trial in the international courts that have been established just for that purpose. Indeed, the United Nations Security Council, in 1993, created the International Criminal Tribunal with the former Yugoslavia located in the Hague. The tribunal has already publicly indicted 60 people for war crimes or crimes against humanity. It is horrific.
Even at this time, today, in the New York Times, we read an account of what is taking place.
I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Serb Forces Said to Abduct and Kill Civilians in Kosovo
(By Chris Hedges)
Decani, Serbia.--Serbian forces have been turning increasingly to the abduction and execution of small groups of civilians in their fight against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, according to human rights officials and witnesses.
Many of the executions took place moments after Serbian special police units concluded attacks on villages held by the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels, witnesses said.
``The number of disappearances are increasing each month,'' said Behxhet Shala, secretary of the ethnic Albanian Council for Human Rights. ``There is a mathematical logic to all this. As the Kosovo Liberation Army kills more police, the police go out and hunt down civilians who live in the areas where the attacks take place. These are reprisal killings.''
Some 300 ethnic Albanians are listed by human rights officials as missing since March, when the conflict intensified between the rebels and the 50,000 or so Serbian soldiers and policemen deployed here. Some of them may have fled to Albania or Montenegro and others may be living with relatives elsewhere in Kosovo. But some were seen by witnesses being led away by special police units, never to reappear.
As the war progresses, and as the rebels, who themselves have abducted at least 30 Serbs, increasingly make Serbian civilians their target, the fear is growing that the fighting could spiral into the kind of war against civilians that swept across Bosnia.
Visits to six of the sites where kidnappings and executions by Serbian forces are said to have taken place yielded accounts by witnesses and a look at the bodies of some of the victims. But the precise number of those executed is difficult to determine.
Based on the accounts of witnesses from each area, it appears that a total of about 100 ethnic Albanians, most of them men of fighting age, have been rounded up and shot, usually in groups of fewer than a dozen, in the last five months.
One man, Ndue Biblekaj, said he witnessed abductions and executions by members of the notorious Serbian, ``black hat'' unit, which was employed in Bosnia to kill Muslims and Croats and expel them from their homes.
``There were massacres in the village of Drenoc and Vokshit near Decani,'' he said in an interview in rebel-held territory. ``I saw a black hat unit line up 13 civilians and shoot them. They stripped the bodies of their clothes, slashed the arms and legs with their knives and dug out their eyes. They used an excavator to dig a pit and bury the bodies.''
``I will never forget this sight,'' he said. ``There were other executions that included women, children and the elderly. You could see the bodies, including one group of 15 people, lined up by the side of road.''
The detained men were often marched in single file by the black-uniformed Interior Ministry commando unit to the local water treatment plant, which was used as a command center, he said.
Biblekaj, an ethnic Albanian, served for eight years in the police force in the border village of Junik. He was part of the Serbian force that recaptured Decani from the rebels in June. The Serbs shelled the town reducing whole sections to rubble. They sent in tanks and armored personnel carriers, blasting holes in the walls of houses and driving nearly the entire population over the mountains into Albania.
Decani is now abandoned, and the Serbian police, who crouch behind sandbagged positions in the ruins, come under frequent fire from rebel units.
Biblekaj has deserted the police to join the rebel movement. He changed sides after the attack on Decani, because, he said, he was appalled by the killing there.
Repeated attempts to inspect two sites suspected of being mass graves in a wooded area near the deserted and badly damaged town, still the scene of frequent armed clashes, were thwarted by special commando police units.
The governor of Kosovo, Veljko Odalovic, a Serb in a province that is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, denied that the police had executed anyone. Serbian officials, as a matter of policy, refuse to disclose the names or location of those taken into custody.
Not every ethnic Albanian who is picked up by the police disappears permanently, but the fear of being seized has become common in these villages. Many are those picked up return after a few days, complaining of beatings and other ill treatment at the hands of the police.
According to witnesses, the largest number of killings occurred in the villages of Likosane and Cirez at the end of February, in the village of Prekaz in the first week of March, in the village of Poklek at the start of May, in Ljubenic at the end of May and in Decani in June.
On May 30, special police units entered Poklek and ordered most of the residents into a house owned by Shait Qorri.
Fazli Berisha, who was outside the village hiding behind a wall, said he saw 60 or 70 women and children ordered out of the house as Serbian forces burned neighboring homes. The women were told to walk across a field to Vasiljevo, a neighboring village, he said.
``Hajirz Hajdini and Mahmut Berisha were brought out moments later and told to walk in the opposite direction,'' he said, referring to two men. ``As they walked away they were shot by the police. Sefer Qorri, 10 minutes later, was brought out of the house and told to walk in this direction. He was shot in about the same spot.''
The villagers said they later found the body of Ardian Deliu, a 17-year-old youth, near Vasileva, about two miles away, but they said nine men remain missing.
On June 8, Fred Abrahams, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, spoke with Zahrije Podrimcaku, who witnessed the attack on Poklek. An hour after speaking with Abrahams, who is compiling a report on human rights violations, she was arrested by Serbian police officers in Pristina, the provincial capital. She was charged a week later with involvement in terrorist activity. She remains in jail.
Poklek is part of the silent no man's land that lies between the Serbs and the rebels, who control about 40 percent of the province. Broken glass litters the main street. The deserted stucco homes and small shops have been looted, with household items strewn over yards and left in broken heaps. A pack of mangy dogs snarl from behind the blackened shell of a house, and the stench of a dead farm animal rises from an untended hayfield.
Down the road in the town of Glogovac the residents seem to move in fear down the dirt streets, which are periodically the targets of Serbian snipers. A farmer, Ali Dibrani, 54, was shot dead recently as he walked home at dusk with his niece.
The Serbian authorities, who have issued a written order to block food and commercial goods to all but state-run shops in Kosovo, have effectively cut supplies to Glogovac and nearby rebel-held areas. The shortages have left people bartering for liter-size plastic bottles filled with gas. The clinic has run out of medicine, and processed food, like cooking oil, is scarce.
Here, too, abductions have left their mark. Dr. Hafir Shala, 49, an ethnic Albanian who worked in a clinic run by Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity mission in Glogovac, was seized by the Serbian police on April 10.
Shala, who was jailed for four years for separatist activity during Yugoslavia's period of Communist rule, was pulled from a car at a police checkpoint on the road to Pristina and put in a black jeep with three plainclothes police officers. One officer got into a gray Volkswagen Passat with two of Shala's companions. The two vehicles were driven to the central police station in Pristina.
``The three of us were taken to separate rooms on the third floor,'' said Shaban Neziri, 49, who was traveling with the doctor, as he sat in the remains of an unfinished house in the village. ``I was interrogated for six hours and then told I could leave. When I was escorted out of the room and down the hall I heard horrible screaming. It was Dr. Shala. I stopped. I asked the policeman what was happening to Dr. Shala. He pushed me forward, saying, `Go, go, go.' ''
The doctor never returned. His father, Isuf Shala, 63, went to the police headquarters the next day, but was turned away at the door.
``I saw the police after a few days and they said Hafir was not on the list of prisoners,'' he said, seated cross-legged in his home. ``They said he had never been in police custody. The police said maybe our soldiers had taken him, perhaps I should check with them.''
Mr. D'AMATO. Let me read a little excerpt:
Serbian forces have been turning increasingly to the abduction and execution of small groups of civilians in their fight against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, according to human rights officials and witnesses.
The article goes on to interview a man by the name of Ndue Biblekaj. Biblekaj was a member of the police force for 8 years, and he eventually left in disgust after having witnessed the kinds of things that he describes. He says he has witnessed the abductions and executions by members of the Serbian ``black hat'' unit, which was employed in Bosnia to kill Muslims and Croats and expel them from their homes.
Imagine, they have an official unit, and their job is to get rid of--
and that is the ethnic cleansing--anyone who is different, like the Muslims and Croats. He said, ``I saw black hat units line up 13 civilians and shoot them. They stripped the bodies of their clothes, slashed the arms and legs with their knives and dug out their eyes.
``I will never forget this sight,'' he said. ``There were other executions that included women, children and the elderly. You could see the bodies, including one group of 15 people, lined up by the side of road.''
Biblekaj has deserted the police to join the rebel movement. He changed sides after the attack on Decani, because, he said, he was appalled by the killing there.
That is just one man who was so repulsed at what he saw that he had to do something. He joined the rebel movement.
This is a killing field once again. This is a killing field that unfortunately has been directed by Milosevic to empower himself. That is why this resolution, which is bipartisan and has the support of the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Helms, and the ranking member, Senator Biden, and people from both sides of the aisle, is so important. It is a resolution that will send a clear and convincing signal to the entire world that the United States is sick and tired of the way the world treats war criminals and that the world community can no longer sit by idly while the Milosevic killing machine continues. Yes. Even this day as we are here that killing machine continues. And so tens of thousands of people are on the move, fleeing their homes, and fleeing the villages where they grew up and their forefathers--fleeing because of their ethnic background, and the military forces who are bound to destroy them.
Madam President, I want to commend all of my colleagues who have worked, along with Senator Lieberman and I, in bringing this resolution forward, because the United States should be publicly declaring that there is no reason to continue this without seeking the collection of evidence and making it high priority--evidence that the United States already possesses--to make this evidence available to the tribunal, to that court, as soon as possible. The United States has the ability to do this, and we should discuss with our allies and other States the gathering of this evidence so that Mr. Milosevic can be indicted. And I am certain, given the numerous accounts by historical experts--one of the leading accounts on this is entitled, ``War Crimes and the Issues of Responsibility,'' which was prepared by Norman Cigar and Paul Williams. It is an outstanding study of what is taking place, and the inescapable conclusion that Milosevic can and should be tried as a war criminal.
I ask unanimous consent to have excerpts from this report printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the excerpted material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
War Crimes and the Issue of Responsibility: The Case of Slobodan
Milosevic
(Prepared by Norman Cigar and Paul Williams)
conclusion
The above review of information available in the public domain indicates that there is sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case that Slobodan Milosevic is criminally responsible for the commission of war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia. Specifically, a compelling case may be made that Slobodan Milosevic is liable for:
Complicity in the commission of genocide.
Aiding and abetting, and in some instances directing, the commission of war crimes by Serbian paramilitary agents.
Directing Republic of Serbia forces and agencies to aid and abet the commission of war crimes by Serbian paramilitary agents.
Command responsibility for war crimes committed by Federal forces, including the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Army of Yugoslavia (VJ), and for aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes by the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA).
Command responsibility for war crimes committed by the Republic of Serbia forces, in particular forces under the control of the Serbian Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Internal Affairs, which aided and abetted the commission of war crimes by Serbian paramilitary agents.
Command responsibility for war crimes committed by Serbian paramilitary agents such as Arkan's Tigers, Vojislav Seselj's Chetniks, Mirko Jovic's White Eagles, and others.
about the authors
Norman Cigar is Professor of National Security Studies at the United States Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting, Quantico, Virginia. Previously, he was a senior political-military analyst in the Pentagon, where he worked on the Army Staff. He holds a D. Phil. from Oxford. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the United States Government, the United States Marine Corps, or the Marine Corps University.
Paul Williams is the Executive Director of the Public International Law and Policy Group, and a Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Mr. Williams holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser for European and Canadian Affairs at the United States Department of State. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Public International Law and Policy Group or the United States Government. The Public International Law and Policy Group is a non-profit organization formed for the purpose of providing public international legal assistance to developing states and states in transition.
Mr. D'AMATO. Madam President, I would like to speak to this issue as we go forward. But I see that there is a colleague who has been waiting patiently. We are waiting for one of our Senate colleagues to also join us before I formally call up the amendment that I have described to you.
At this time, I yield the floor so that my colleague, if he wants, can proceed, and I ask that I might be permitted to take the floor thereafter.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
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