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Milosevic Indictments To Increase As More Evidence Unearthed
ZAGREB, June 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, currently indicted for war crimes in Kosovo, will also face charges for atrocities committed in Bosnia and Croatia, the deputy prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes court in the Hague said Friday.
"I can also indicate our intention to bring out additional indictments against Milosevic for his responsibility for crimes committed in Croatia and crimes committed in Bosnia," Graham Blewitt told journalists here.
"It is expected that those two additional indictments will be out by the end of summer," he added.
Yugoslavia's cooperation with the U.N.-based court by transferring Milosevic brought success at Friday's donors conference, in which donor countries and international organizations pledged a total of some $1.28 billion in aid for Belgrade's struggling economy, a spokesman for the European Commission said.
After a week of internal struggle over Milosevic's transfer to the tribunal - in which a top Yugoslav court temporarily froze his transfer - Belgrade had been aiming for about $1.25 billion in aid, and received the unexpected windfall in the form of grants and concessionary loans.
Milosevic was handed over late Thursday to officials of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which has indicted him on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1998-1999 Serbian crackdown on Muslim Albanians in Kosovo - for which new evidence against Milosevic has been unearthed.
Blewitt said that the ICTY planned to join together the three indictments "so we can have one trial against Slobodan Milosevic for his crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and here in Croatia."
Bosnian and Croatian leaders have repeatedly stressed that Milosevic should also be indicted for his role in 1991-95 Serbo-Croatian conflict and 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Croatian President Stipe Mesic, who also served as the last president former Yugoslavia, has said he was ready to testify against Milosevic at the court.
Mesic on Friday described Milosevic's handover as a "politically wise and courageous decision" by Serbian authorities.
"By extraditing Milosevic to The Hague, Serbian authorities confirmed their democratic commitment and made a key step towards facing the truth about the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and the role that Milosevic had in them," Mesic said in a statement.
After his arrest in Belgrade this April, Milosevic admitted that his regime financed secessionist Serb forces in wars in Croatia and Bosnia.
"Milosevic is not last one to leave for The Hague. The others will follow him, and not only from Serbia," Mesic concluded.
The Croatian government hailed Milosevic's transfer saying it hoped he would be soon indicted for crimes committed during Croatian independence war.
"We are convinced that the indictment against Milosevic will soon be extended to include crimes committed in Croatia," Deputy Prime Minister Goran Granic said in a statement.
"We are cooperating closely with prosecutors from the ICTY to help gather evidence and material concerning suspected war crimes in Croatia," Granic added.
Croatian authorities also said they "firmly believe that Milosevic's handover is only the beginning of a process of extradition of all those held responsible for crimes committed during the aggression on Croatia."
Croatian authorities said the transfer was also a "confirmation that the ICTY has begun to deal with the very essence and causes of crimes committed during the wars of aggression aimed at forging a Greater Serbia."
In line with charges brought against Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo, the case of a refrigerated truck filled with bodies of Kosovar Albanians and sunk into the Danube, which authorities have linked to the actions of Serbian soldiers under Milosevic, has turned up grim new evidence.
Seventy-four bodies believed to be those of Kosovo Albanians have been discovered in two mass graves in eastern Serbia, the Beta news agency quoted a local district judge as saying Friday.
Judge Milorad Momcilovic told Beta that the bodies of 74 men had been unearthed from two mass graves near Petrovo Selo, in eastern Serbia.
Some of the decaying corpses were scarred by clear bullet marks, while a number of bullets had also been found, Momcilovic said.
After an autopsy has been performed on the bodies, they will be reburied in individual graves, he said.
Momcilovic said more bodies might be found during further exhumation, which is supervised by ICTY officials.
The mass graves in Petrovo Selo were first discovered in early June, while investigators said the bodies had probably been brought over from Kosovo sometime during the 1999 NATO air war on Yugoslavia.
On Thursday, a Belgrade district court said the bodies of at least 36 civilians, including those of children, had been dug up from a mass grave near the Yugoslav capital.
The bodies, again those of Kosovo Albanians, are believed to have been earlier held in the refrigerated truck used by Serb forces that was later found at the bottom of the Danube river.
During the NATO air campaign, Serbian security forces are thought to have received orders to "clean up the terrain" in Kosovo. They then fished the truck out of the river in an attempt to cover up the alleged atrocities.
The bodies, among them nine children younger than seven years old and an eight-month-old fetus, were found in a grave located in the village of Batajnica, near Belgrade, the court said.
Belgrade forensic experts began exhuming the corpses on May 31st.
Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said earlier this month that some 1,000 bodies of Muslim Albanian victims of the 1998-99 war in Kosovo could be found in several mass graves in Serbia.
In May, the police accused Milosevic of ordering that measures be taken to "eliminate" all evidence of crimes committed during the Serbian crackdown in Kosovo in 1999, when thousands of ethnic Albanians went missing.
The international community has accused Milosevic's forces of committing widespread atrocities.
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