Yugoslav army was heavy handed says British officer

Britain’s former defence attache in Belgrade told Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial today that Yugoslav army units were ordered to bypass the normal military chain of command during the Kosovo conflict.

They reported directly to then President Milosevic or his top aides, said retired Colonel John Crossland, who served in the Belgrade embassy in 1998 and 1999.

He said military and police operations against Kosovo Albanian rebels, backed by artillery and armoured units, ‘‘were extremely heavy handed.’’

‘‘I saw 200-300 villages being burned. Houses and petrol stations were looted.’’ Albanian areas ‘‘were completely burned out,’’ Col Crossland said, but senior army officers in Belgrade seemed to have no direct control.

Col Crossland said he regularly met General Momcilo Perisic, then the army commander, and General Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, the former head of military intelligence, but concluded that neither officer was fully informed of activity on the ground in Kosovo.

Perisic and Dimitrijevic ‘‘were unhappy with how the chain of command was organized, particularly with the army being in direct support of police operations in Kosovo,’’ he told the court.

He said the operational chain of command went directly from General Nebojsa Pavkovic, who commanded army units in Kosovo, to Milosevic and Nikola Sainovic, the ex-president’s top lieutenant on Kosovo issues. Sainovic surrendered to the tribunal earlier this year.

Milosevic is on trial in The Hague on war crimes charges that include genocide.

Earlier today, a Kosovo Albanian woman told the court she watched Serb troops massacre her husband, four children and dozens of relatives in the town of Suva Reka just two days after the Nato bombing campaign began.

Shureta Berisha, 41, said her husband Nexhat was shot in the back after he was beaten and robbed just outside their home.

Men dressed in police and military uniforms forced the remaining 25 members of her family in to a nearby cafe and told them to sit. ‘‘Then they started shooting,’’ she said. ‘‘It lasted for about 20, maybe 30 minutes.’’ One of her children was just 22 months old.