[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 96 (Friday, July 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8448-S8450]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IS A CRIMINAL

  Mr. D'AMATO. Madam President, for too long now, the world has been 
watching a terrible carnage take place with the changing of the former 
Yugoslavia, with the various factions fighting for autonomy, with the 
deterioration of respect for human life being so obvious, that we 
almost take it as a matter of fact when people are massacred, and we 
hear that the atrocities reach incredible levels.
  It becomes commonplace to hear of tens of thousands of people who can 
no longer live in their homes. Indeed, estimates are that 3 million 
people have been forced to move. They call it ``ethnic cleansing.'' 
Despite the best attempts by the United States and some of our allies, 
we have been unable to bring about some resolve. Tens of thousands of 
U.S. and NATO troops are now positioned in Bosnia to attempt to keep 
the conflict from again affecting the lives of the innocent--women and 
children, people who are held hostage, people who are abducted, women 
who are raped, young men who are killed because of their ethnic 
background. It is incredible. Muslims are killed because they are 
Muslims. Croats are killed because they are Croats. Serbs are killed 
because they are Serbs. The madness that exists in this day and age is 
incomprehensible.
  Madam President, the situation is not getting better. The situation 
is deteriorating. And behind it all, the motivator, the prime mover in 
all of this, is one man. That doesn't mean that there aren't others who 
are responsible on all of the sides for having had their people 
undertake horrific acts against humanity. But there is one person--a 
hard-core Communist dictator who has been able to keep power by way of 
appealing to the worst prejudices of people--by the name of Slobodan 
Milosevic. He would like to think of himself as a duly-elected 
President. He is the last surviving Communist leader still in power 
from before the wall fell. Make no mistake about it, although he may 
call himself a President, but he is a criminal, he is a thug, and he 
has been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, 
including his own people. This is the man, the thug, the killer.
  Indeed, the resolution that I, Senator Lieberman, and a number of our 
colleagues, including the present Presiding Officer, have worked on is 
one that deals with this thug. It is one that will call for the United 
States and others to gather the factual information necessary to pursue 
a trial in the international courts that have been established just for 
that purpose. Indeed, the United Nations Security Council, in 1993, 
created the International Criminal Tribunal with the former Yugoslavia 
located in the Hague. The tribunal has already publicly indicted 60 
people for war crimes or crimes against humanity. It is horrific.
  Even at this time, today, in the New York Times, we read an account 
of what is taking place.
  I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this article be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        Serb Forces Said to Abduct and Kill Civilians in Kosovo

                           (By Chris Hedges)

       Decani, Serbia.--Serbian forces have been turning 
     increasingly to the abduction and execution of small groups 
     of civilians in their fight against ethnic Albanian 
     separatists in Kosovo, according to human rights officials 
     and witnesses.
       Many of the executions took place moments after Serbian 
     special police units concluded attacks on villages held by 
     the Kosovo Liberation Army rebels, witnesses said.
       ``The number of disappearances are increasing each month,'' 
     said Behxhet Shala, secretary of the ethnic Albanian Council 
     for Human Rights. ``There is a mathematical logic to all 
     this. As the Kosovo Liberation Army kills more police, the 
     police go out and hunt down civilians who live in the areas 
     where the attacks take place. These are reprisal killings.''
       Some 300 ethnic Albanians are listed by human rights 
     officials as missing since March, when the conflict 
     intensified between the rebels and the 50,000 or so Serbian 
     soldiers and policemen deployed here. Some of them may have 
     fled to Albania or Montenegro and others may be living with 
     relatives elsewhere in Kosovo. But some were seen by 
     witnesses being led away by special police units, never to 
     reappear.
       As the war progresses, and as the rebels, who themselves 
     have abducted at least 30 Serbs, increasingly make Serbian 
     civilians their target, the fear is growing that the

[[Page S8449]]

     fighting could spiral into the kind of war against civilians 
     that swept across Bosnia.
       Visits to six of the sites where kidnappings and executions 
     by Serbian forces are said to have taken place yielded 
     accounts by witnesses and a look at the bodies of some of the 
     victims. But the precise number of those executed is 
     difficult to determine.
       Based on the accounts of witnesses from each area, it 
     appears that a total of about 100 ethnic Albanians, most of 
     them men of fighting age, have been rounded up and shot, 
     usually in groups of fewer than a dozen, in the last five 
     months.
       One man, Ndue Biblekaj, said he witnessed abductions and 
     executions by members of the notorious Serbian, ``black hat'' 
     unit, which was employed in Bosnia to kill Muslims and Croats 
     and expel them from their homes.
       ``There were massacres in the village of Drenoc and Vokshit 
     near Decani,'' he said in an interview in rebel-held 
     territory. ``I saw a black hat unit line up 13 civilians and 
     shoot them. They stripped the bodies of their clothes, 
     slashed the arms and legs with their knives and dug out their 
     eyes. They used an excavator to dig a pit and bury the 
     bodies.''
       ``I will never forget this sight,'' he said. ``There were 
     other executions that included women, children and the 
     elderly. You could see the bodies, including one group of 15 
     people, lined up by the side of road.''
       The detained men were often marched in single file by the 
     black-uniformed Interior Ministry commando unit to the local 
     water treatment plant, which was used as a command center, he 
     said.
       Biblekaj, an ethnic Albanian, served for eight years in the 
     police force in the border village of Junik. He was part of 
     the Serbian force that recaptured Decani from the rebels in 
     June. The Serbs shelled the town reducing whole sections to 
     rubble. They sent in tanks and armored personnel carriers, 
     blasting holes in the walls of houses and driving nearly the 
     entire population over the mountains into Albania.
       Decani is now abandoned, and the Serbian police, who crouch 
     behind sandbagged positions in the ruins, come under frequent 
     fire from rebel units.
       Biblekaj has deserted the police to join the rebel 
     movement. He changed sides after the attack on Decani, 
     because, he said, he was appalled by the killing there.
       Repeated attempts to inspect two sites suspected of being 
     mass graves in a wooded area near the deserted and badly 
     damaged town, still the scene of frequent armed clashes, were 
     thwarted by special commando police units.
       The governor of Kosovo, Veljko Odalovic, a Serb in a 
     province that is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, denied that the 
     police had executed anyone. Serbian officials, as a matter of 
     policy, refuse to disclose the names or location of those 
     taken into custody.
       Not every ethnic Albanian who is picked up by the police 
     disappears permanently, but the fear of being seized has 
     become common in these villages. Many are those picked up 
     return after a few days, complaining of beatings and other 
     ill treatment at the hands of the police.
       According to witnesses, the largest number of killings 
     occurred in the villages of Likosane and Cirez at the end of 
     February, in the village of Prekaz in the first week of 
     March, in the village of Poklek at the start of May, in 
     Ljubenic at the end of May and in Decani in June.
       On May 30, special police units entered Poklek and ordered 
     most of the residents into a house owned by Shait Qorri.
       Fazli Berisha, who was outside the village hiding behind a 
     wall, said he saw 60 or 70 women and children ordered out of 
     the house as Serbian forces burned neighboring homes. The 
     women were told to walk across a field to Vasiljevo, a 
     neighboring village, he said.
       ``Hajirz Hajdini and Mahmut Berisha were brought out 
     moments later and told to walk in the opposite direction,'' 
     he said, referring to two men. ``As they walked away they 
     were shot by the police. Sefer Qorri, 10 minutes later, was 
     brought out of the house and told to walk in this direction. 
     He was shot in about the same spot.''
       The villagers said they later found the body of Ardian 
     Deliu, a 17-year-old youth, near Vasileva, about two miles 
     away, but they said nine men remain missing.
       On June 8, Fred Abrahams, a researcher at Human Rights 
     Watch, spoke with Zahrije Podrimcaku, who witnessed the 
     attack on Poklek. An hour after speaking with Abrahams, who 
     is compiling a report on human rights violations, she was 
     arrested by Serbian police officers in Pristina, the 
     provincial capital. She was charged a week later with 
     involvement in terrorist activity. She remains in jail.
       Poklek is part of the silent no man's land that lies 
     between the Serbs and the rebels, who control about 40 
     percent of the province. Broken glass litters the main 
     street. The deserted stucco homes and small shops have been 
     looted, with household items strewn over yards and left in 
     broken heaps. A pack of mangy dogs snarl from behind the 
     blackened shell of a house, and the stench of a dead farm 
     animal rises from an untended hayfield.
       Down the road in the town of Glogovac the residents seem to 
     move in fear down the dirt streets, which are periodically 
     the targets of Serbian snipers. A farmer, Ali Dibrani, 54, 
     was shot dead recently as he walked home at dusk with his 
     niece.
       The Serbian authorities, who have issued a written order to 
     block food and commercial goods to all but state-run shops in 
     Kosovo, have effectively cut supplies to Glogovac and nearby 
     rebel-held areas. The shortages have left people bartering 
     for liter-size plastic bottles filled with gas. The clinic 
     has run out of medicine, and processed food, like cooking 
     oil, is scarce.
       Here, too, abductions have left their mark. Dr. Hafir 
     Shala, 49, an ethnic Albanian who worked in a clinic run by 
     Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity mission in Glogovac, was 
     seized by the Serbian police on April 10.
       Shala, who was jailed for four years for separatist 
     activity during Yugoslavia's period of Communist rule, was 
     pulled from a car at a police checkpoint on the road to 
     Pristina and put in a black jeep with three plainclothes 
     police officers. One officer got into a gray Volkswagen 
     Passat with two of Shala's companions. The two vehicles were 
     driven to the central police station in Pristina.
       ``The three of us were taken to separate rooms on the third 
     floor,'' said Shaban Neziri, 49, who was traveling with the 
     doctor, as he sat in the remains of an unfinished house in 
     the village. ``I was interrogated for six hours and then told 
     I could leave. When I was escorted out of the room and down 
     the hall I heard horrible screaming. It was Dr. Shala. I 
     stopped. I asked the policeman what was happening to Dr. 
     Shala. He pushed me forward, saying, `Go, go, go.' ''
       The doctor never returned. His father, Isuf Shala, 63, went 
     to the police headquarters the next day, but was turned away 
     at the door.
       ``I saw the police after a few days and they said Hafir was 
     not on the list of prisoners,'' he said, seated cross-legged 
     in his home. ``They said he had never been in police custody. 
     The police said maybe our soldiers had taken him, perhaps I 
     should check with them.''

  Mr. D'AMATO. Let me read a little excerpt:

       Serbian forces have been turning increasingly to the 
     abduction and execution of small groups of civilians in their 
     fight against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, 
     according to human rights officials and witnesses.

  The article goes on to interview a man by the name of Ndue Biblekaj. 
Biblekaj was a member of the police force for 8 years, and he 
eventually left in disgust after having witnessed the kinds of things 
that he describes. He says he has witnessed the abductions and 
executions by members of the Serbian ``black hat'' unit, which was 
employed in Bosnia to kill Muslims and Croats and expel them from their 
homes.
  Imagine, they have an official unit, and their job is to get rid of--
and that is the ethnic cleansing--anyone who is different, like the 
Muslims and Croats. He said, ``I saw black hat units line up 13 
civilians and shoot them. They stripped the bodies of their clothes, 
slashed the arms and legs with their knives and dug out their eyes.

       ``I will never forget this sight,'' he said. ``There were 
     other executions that included women, children and the 
     elderly. You could see the bodies, including one group of 15 
     people, lined up by the side of road.''
       Biblekaj has deserted the police to join the rebel 
     movement. He changed sides after the attack on Decani, 
     because, he said, he was appalled by the killing there.

  That is just one man who was so repulsed at what he saw that he had 
to do something. He joined the rebel movement.
  This is a killing field once again. This is a killing field that 
unfortunately has been directed by Milosevic to empower himself. That 
is why this resolution, which is bipartisan and has the support of the 
chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Helms, and the 
ranking member, Senator Biden, and people from both sides of the aisle, 
is so important. It is a resolution that will send a clear and 
convincing signal to the entire world that the United States is sick 
and tired of the way the world treats war criminals and that the world 
community can no longer sit by idly while the Milosevic killing machine 
continues. Yes. Even this day as we are here that killing machine 
continues. And so tens of thousands of people are on the move, fleeing 
their homes, and fleeing the villages where they grew up and their 
forefathers--fleeing because of their ethnic background, and the 
military forces who are bound to destroy them.
  Madam President, I want to commend all of my colleagues who have 
worked, along with Senator Lieberman and I, in bringing this resolution 
forward, because the United States should be publicly declaring that 
there is no reason to continue this without seeking the collection of 
evidence and making it high priority--evidence that the United States 
already possesses--to make this evidence available to the tribunal, to 
that court, as soon as possible. The United States has the ability

[[Page S8450]]

to do this, and we should discuss with our allies and other States the 
gathering of this evidence so that Mr. Milosevic can be indicted. And I 
am certain, given the numerous accounts by historical experts--one of 
the leading accounts on this is entitled, ``War Crimes and the Issues 
of Responsibility,'' which was prepared by Norman Cigar and Paul 
Williams. It is an outstanding study of what is taking place, and the 
inescapable conclusion that Milosevic can and should be tried as a war 
criminal.
  I ask unanimous consent to have excerpts from this report printed in 
the Record.
  There being no objection, the excerpted material was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

   War Crimes and the Issue of Responsibility: The Case of Slobodan 
                               Milosevic

              (Prepared by Norman Cigar and Paul Williams)


                               conclusion

       The above review of information available in the public 
     domain indicates that there is sufficient evidence to 
     establish a prima facie case that Slobodan Milosevic is 
     criminally responsible for the commission of war crimes in 
     Croatia and Bosnia. Specifically, a compelling case may be 
     made that Slobodan Milosevic is liable for:
       Complicity in the commission of genocide.
       Aiding and abetting, and in some instances directing, the 
     commission of war crimes by Serbian paramilitary agents.
       Directing Republic of Serbia forces and agencies to aid and 
     abet the commission of war crimes by Serbian paramilitary 
     agents.
       Command responsibility for war crimes committed by Federal 
     forces, including the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the 
     Army of Yugoslavia (VJ), and for aiding and abetting the 
     commission of war crimes by the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA).
       Command responsibility for war crimes committed by the 
     Republic of Serbia forces, in particular forces under the 
     control of the Serbian Ministry of Defense and Ministry of 
     Internal Affairs, which aided and abetted the commission of 
     war crimes by Serbian paramilitary agents.
       Command responsibility for war crimes committed by Serbian 
     paramilitary agents such as Arkan's Tigers, Vojislav Seselj's 
     Chetniks, Mirko Jovic's White Eagles, and others.


                           about the authors

       Norman Cigar is Professor of National Security Studies at 
     the United States Marine Corps School of Advanced 
     Warfighting, Quantico, Virginia. Previously, he was a senior 
     political-military analyst in the Pentagon, where he worked 
     on the Army Staff. He holds a D. Phil. from Oxford. The views 
     expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the 
     official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the 
     United States Government, the United States Marine Corps, or 
     the Marine Corps University.
       Paul Williams is the Executive Director of the Public 
     International Law and Policy Group, and a Fulbright Research 
     Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Mr. Williams holds a 
     J.D. from Stanford Law School, and previously served as an 
     Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser for 
     European and Canadian Affairs at the United States Department 
     of State. The views expressed here are those of the author 
     and do not reflect the official policy or position of the 
     Public International Law and Policy Group or the United 
     States Government. The Public International Law and Policy 
     Group is a non-profit organization formed for the purpose of 
     providing public international legal assistance to developing 
     states and states in transition.

  Mr. D'AMATO. Madam President, I would like to speak to this issue as 
we go forward. But I see that there is a colleague who has been waiting 
patiently. We are waiting for one of our Senate colleagues to also join 
us before I formally call up the amendment that I have described to 
you.
  At this time, I yield the floor so that my colleague, if he wants, 
can proceed, and I ask that I might be permitted to take the floor 
thereafter.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.

                          ____________________