Hague Trial for Ex-Serbian President Ends

Belgrade _ The war crimes trial of a former Serbian President and five other top officials is nearing its end with the closing statements by the Prosecution and Defence being heard on Tuesday.

Milan Milutinovic, was the Serbian President during the final years of the rule of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, is charged with forced deportations, murder and the persecution of ethnic Albanian civilians during the 1999 armed conflict in what was then Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo.

Alongside Milutinovic, the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, at The Hague indicted for the same crimes the then Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic, the Army Chief of Staff Dragoljub Ojdanic, the Commander of the Third Army Nebojsa Pavkovic, the Commander of the Pristina Corps Vladimir Lazarevic and the Serbia’s top policeman in Kosovo, Sreten Lukic.

The ICTY’s prosecutors will have eight hours to present their closing statements, while defence attorneys will have two and half hours each.

Milosevic, also charged for the war crimes that troops under his command committed in Kosovo, died in 2006 while on trial before The Hague Tribunal.

He was also indicted for war crimes during the 1991-1995 wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.