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Croatian Serb rebel leader goes on trial
By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
December 13, 2005

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A war crimes trial opened Tuesday for Milan Martic, a leader of Croatia's breakaway minority Serbs, with prosecutors accusing the former policeman of hundreds of murders, while he said he had been defending his people against Croatian atrocities.

Martic is accused of offenses from 1991 - the very beginning of the wars that broke up Yugoslavia - until 1995, when the breakaway Serb region of Krajina was recaptured by Croatian forces. The trial came just one day after Martic's archenemy and commander of the Croatian forces, Ante Gotovina, made his first appearance at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and pleaded innocent to all charges.

Martic, 51, was indicted by the U.N. tribunal in July 1995, two months after he allegedly ordered the bombardment of Croatia's capital Zagreb with cluster bombs, which killed at least nine people and wounded dozens more.

He escaped from Krajina in August 1995 when Gotovina's Croatian forces recaptured the rest of the area that Serbs had held since 1991 when Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. Gotovina's forces killed some 150 civilians and forcing tens of thousands to flee to Serb-dominated areas of Bosnia.

Underscoring the religious divide in the Balkans, Martic crossed himself and then addressed the court for nearly an hour, standing in the dock and reading a statement. He complained that at times during his 3 1/2 years in U.N. custody, he thought he would go mad.

"God knows that when I was one of the leaders of Serbs who were persecuted in Croatia in Knin and other places, all I did was protect every civilian," he said. The indictment has been "fed by dubious witnesses. "Everything but my first and last name is erroneous."

He accused prosecutors of anti-Serb bias and ignoring atrocities against his countrymen.

"I want the truth about the suffering of the Serbs," he said, detailing abuses of the Serb minority in the period preceding Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia in 1991. "I intend to prove the innocence of my people, my Krajina people."

Martic accused prosecutors of only charging Gotovina with a fraction of the crimes he actually committed.

Prosecutor Alex Whiting described a concept by Serb leaders in 1991 to carve out a "Greater Serbian" state within the six Balkan republics that would annex parts of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia and Montenegro.

Martic and others committed atrocities "as they tried to implement this concept and create a separate Serb state within Croatia" that they called Serb Krajina, Whiting said.

"The case against the accused is simple and straightforward: The accused and others had a common criminal purpose which was successfully achieved for a number of years to rid this planned Serb state of Croats and non-Serbs," Whiting said. "Croats and other non-Serbs became the enemy."

A campaign of "ethnic cleansing" led to the discrimination, forced deportation, beating and murder of hundreds, Whiting said.

"Croats and other non-Serbs were targeted by discriminatory measures, forced removal, imprisonment and murder in an effort to drive them away. Their property was looted and destroyed so they would never have a home to return to," he said.

Martic was captured and transferred to The Hague in May 2002. He faces 19 counts of murder, persecution, unlawful imprisonment, torture and other crimes against humanity against non-Serbs. He pleaded innocent.

Croatian American Association
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Daniella Sumera
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