Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Tribunal finds U.S./NATO guilty of war crimes
By John Catalinotto
Belgrade,
Yugoslavia
Catalinotto represented the International Action Center
on the team of prosecutors for the Belgrade tribunal.
The third hearing of the International Peoples Tribunal
initiated in Russia by the All-Slavic Assembly was held in
Belgrade March 27-29. The tribunal coincided with the
anniversary of the start of the U.S./NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia. The panel of judges found NATO leaders guilty of
violations of international law regarding rules of war.
The tribunal heard 12 Yugoslav eyewitnesses' and experts'
testimony regarding NATO war crimes in targeting the civilian
population, the economic infrastructure and the environment of
Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav witnesses used videos and computer slides to
illustrate their testimony. Pictures showed the civilian areas
destroyed on April 6, 1999, when five NATO missiles hit
Aleksinac, a small mining community. Seventeen civilians were
killed and more than 400 homes were destroyed. There is no
military infrastructure in or near the residential area that
was bombed.
Neda Stanisovcevic, a reporter from the Yugoslav news agency
Tanjug, provided an eyewitness account of the April 6 and May
27 attacks on Aleksinac. The NATO commanders were determined to
pressure the Yugoslav population to end the war so that the
brass could avoid launching a risky ground invasion of
Kosovo.
The first hearing in this International Peoples Tribunal
(IPT) was held in the Russian city Yaroslavl on Dec. 14. The
second was held in Kiev on Jan. 23 in the parliamentary
building of the Ukrainian capital. The next one is planned for
Minsk, capital of Belarus, for sometime in April. It will focus
on NATO crimes against humanity.
Since the overturning of the USSR in 1991, people in the
countries that were former republics of the Soviet Union have
been under pressure from the West to surrender their
independence--and their raw materials and labor force--to the
imperialist banks.
The eastward expansion of NATO, and especially the bombing
attack on Yugoslavia, has awakened a need in these countries to
defend themselves from this new form of aggression. The
awakening in turn has led groups and individuals to form the
IPT as a first step in mobilizing resistance to NATO
expansion.
IPT organizers have been coordinating their efforts with the
Commission of Inquiry on U.S./NATO War Crimes Against
Yugoslavia--organized by the International Action Center and
former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark--and with the
Berlin-based European Preparatory Committee for the
International Tribunals.
The IAC participated in the Belgrade tribunal as part of the
team of prosecutors; two of the Berlin organizers served as
judges.
Committees drew up
similar charges
Although the three groups began their work independently,
the charges that they formulated against U.S. and NATO leaders
were remarkably similar. This in itself indicates that
U.S./NATO crimes were blatant and obvious to anyone who had
resisted the brainwashing of the establishment media in the
NATO countries.
Prof. Mikhail Kuznetsov of Moscow chaired the hearing and
led the large Russian delegation. Another large delegation came
from Ukraine, led by Socialist Party deputy Vil Nikolayich
Romashenko. Participants also came from Belarus, Bulgaria,
Georgia, Poland, Afghanistan, Mexico and Canada.
Among the many distinguished personalities taking part in
the tribunal were cosmonaut Vitali I. Sevastianov, who circled
the earth in orbit over 100 times in 1970 and again in 1975;
retired Soviet Admiral Anatoli Yurkovsky, now a member of the
Ukrainian parliament; and Russian philosopher Alexander
Zinoviev.
The tribunal was organized to allow prosecutors and
witnesses to make their statements. Then defense or prosecuting
attorneys and any member of the panel of judges could ask
follow-up questions. The prior week the tribunal had invited
the accused--U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Wolfgang Schroeder, and
other political and military leaders of NATO countries--to
appear before the tribunal.
The testimony of many participants from East European
countries and the former Soviet Union showed detailed
historical knowledge about U.S. and West European geopolitical
interests in East Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central
Asia--including the oil-rich Caspian Sea region. They also
expressed full solidarity with the struggle of the Yugoslav
people against NATO bombing and sanctions.
At least a dozen Yugoslav witnesses presented evidence of
thousands of civilians killed and injured from the bombings, of
whom about 30 percent of the killed and 40 percent of the
injured were children. They also told of the use of outlawed
cluster bombs in civilian areas, attacks on television
broadcast stations in Belgrade and Novi Sad.
They told too of the unspeakable damage to the environment
from bombing the industrial zone of Pancevo, near Belgrade, and
of the oil refineries of Novi Sad. Oil spills and chemical
flows poisoned the air, the soil, ground water and spread
throughout the vast Danube river.
On March 29, after all the evidence was presented and the
jury had time to deliberate, Professor Kuznetsov read the
verdict: NATO leaders were found guilty of war crimes.
The German committee is preparing a hearing in Hamburg for
April 16, to focus on crimes committed by the German regime. A
Europe-wide hearing is scheduled for Berlin on June 2-3.
The U.S. Commission of Inquiry has set June 10 in New York
for a daylong final International Tribunal on U.S./NATO War
Crimes Against Yugoslavia.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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