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Conference on Missing People Reports as Milosevic Defiant
SARAJEVO, Nov. 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The bodies of nearly 2,000 Bosnian Muslims have been exhumed from mass and individual graves across the country in the last six months, the Fena news agency reported Sunday, quoting the head of the Muslim-led state commission for missing people.
Amor Masovic addressed a regional conference on missing people held in Sarajevo with experts from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Yugoslavia - which focused on finding missing persons after nearly a decade of Balkan conflicts.
The conference was organized under the auspices of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).
Masovic said, "12,000 bodies have been exhumed in Bosnia since the Dayton agreement was signed in 1995 to stop the war in the country."
Most of the exhumed victims were believed to be Muslim civilians killed by Bosnian Serb forces during the war.
Among them are more than 4,000 Muslim victims exhumed in Srebrenica, killed after Serb forces captured the town on July 11, 1995, and massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men in the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
Bosnian Serbs, according to the Bosnian Serb commission for missing people, have exhumed 2,249 bodies since 1996, and identified half that number so far.
According to ICMP estimates, between 25,000-30,000 people have been listed as missing in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the country's 1992-95 war.
Late last month, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic maintained his defiance of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, where he is on trial. He angrily refused to answer new charges of atrocities in Kosovo and Croatia in outbursts that prompted judges to cut off his microphone twice.
Appearing before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for the third time since Serbian authorities turned him in on June 28. Milosevic again said that he would not recognize the court as legal, nor read the indictments against him.
"I am not going to submit any motions to this court because I do not recognize this court," Milosevic told presiding judge Richard May. "I have no intention to familiarize myself with the contents of something that's been totally fabricated and is far from the truth."
The court decided to have the full text of the Kosovo and Croatia indictments read out to Milosevic in Serbo-Croat to ensure he understood the charges against him, tribunal spokesman Jim Landale said.
Dressed in a dark blue suit, the 60-year-old former head of state sat impassively, fiddling with a coffee cup and watching the public gallery. A court official read out details of Milosevic's alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Serb forces during the 1998-99 Serb crackdowns on Albanians in Kosovo issued in 1999.
The one-time Serb strongman continued to speak in Serbo-Croat, but the judge cut off his microphone and the English translation.
"Mr. Milosevic will you be quiet please," May snapped as he ordered the reading of a second indictment for crimes committed in Croatia.
The indictment confirmed by a judge on October 9 is also for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1991-95 war in Croatia - which include mass murder and the systematic rapes of Bosnian Muslim women by Serbian troops.
Milosevic denounced the charges of war crimes in Croatia as a "crime against my people" and argued that Serbs were being made to pay the price for the atrocities of war.
May cut him off again and entered another plea of not guilty on his behalf.
A status review conference to review preparations for Milosevic's trial on the Kosovo indictment due to begin early next year was also held last week. Milosevic has refused legal representation, arguing that since he does not recognize the ICTY, he will not avail himself of defense counsel.
In the face of the former president's continued defiance, Florence Hartmann, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told journalists they would file the Bosnia indictment, which charges Milosevic with genocide, the gravest of war crimes.
Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic became the first defendant before the ICTY to be convicted of genocide. He has been sentenced to 46 years in prison for his role in the Srebrenica massacre.
Indictments for genocide have been filed against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, both of whom are in hiding.
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