Milosevic ignored our warnings, says human rights chief

A US human rights group informed Slobodan Milosevic of abuses committed by Serbs in Croatia in the early 1990s but he did nothing to prevent or punish them, activist Jeri Laber told the former Yugoslav president’s war crimes trial today.

Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence before the UN court in The Hague, said he had no control over Serbs in Croatia at the time and questioned the competence of Laber’s group, Helsinki Watch.

Helsinki Watch later became Human Rights Watch, the largest US based human rights organisation.

Laber was chairwoman of the group in January 1992 when it sent a letter to Milosevic, then president of Serbia, demanding a halt to atrocities it said were being committed by Serb paramilitaries and the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army in Croatia.

The crimes included “the summary execution of civilians the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force against civilian targets the torture and mistreatment of detainees disappearances and the taking of hostages ... the forced displacement and resettlement of civilians,” the letter said.

The report was based on interviews and evidence from victims in Croatia in 1991.

Laber said in court her group’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

“We did not see any significant response to prevent those abuses or to punish those that were responsible for those that committed them,” she said.

Laber said they received an answer from the Serb government in February 1992 denying it had control over Croatian Serbs, but showing it at least knew about Helsinki Watch’s findings. In addition, the letter from Belgrade said Serbia would look into any actions taken by citizens of Serbia abroad.

“It was an acceptance of responsibility and an agreement to look into the allegations,” she said.

“That letter was the beginning of an attempt, a public relations attempt, by the Serb government to counter its bad image.”

Milosevic, who became president of Yugoslavia only in 1997, was widely seen as influencing actions of Serbs elsewhere in Yugoslavia.

He demanded today that the alleged victims Helsinki Watch interviewed at the time should be named and brought to the UN court for questioning.

Laber said the people interviewed had been promised anonymity and they would probably be impossible to find after a decade of war.

“It is a little late for you to want to respond to a report that was first brought to your attention in 1991,” she said.

Milosevic’s trial for war crimes – including genocide – committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo began in February and is expected to stretch well into 2004.