BELGRADE, June 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the trial against Yugoslav officials accused of committing war crimes in the former Yugoslavia rages on, the UN war crimes tribunal for the former nation could press charges against about 100 new suspects over the next two years, a top court official was quoted as saying Saturday.

Graham Blewitt, deputy prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said his office was planning 35 new indictments against about 100 people by 2004, the Belgrade newspaper Danas reported.

The Hague-based tribunal has so far publicly indicted 76 suspects - 23 of them still at large - for war crimes over the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, notably former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic who has been on trial since February. Milosevic is also accused of sanctioning the massacre in Srebrenica that saw at least 2,000 Muslim men murdered in what has come to be regarded as a blatant act of ethnic cleansing.

Other members of Milosevic’s government also stand trial for war crimes related to rape and sexual enslavement. Reports during and after the conflict in the Balkans stated that Serbian army personnel were instructed to use rape and sexual abuse as a systematic means of torture. Thousands of women have stated that they were kidnapped and imprisoned in complexes that amount to “rape facilities” and that they were raped on almost a daily basis by almost all of their captors.

Last year, several Bosnian women successfully testified against three Serbian army officials in relation to sexual abuse and rape in the town of Foca. Tribunal Judge Florence Mumba indicted Dragoljub Kunarac, Zoran Vukovic and Radomir Kovac on several counts of rape and handed down prison sentences ranging from 12-20 years. Judge Mumba accused the men of raping the women solely because they were Muslim. Several of the women testifying reported widespread damage to their reproductive organs and psychological repercussions. Many Muslim women, including some that testified at the trial, reported that they have since given birth to the children of the men who raped them.

One Bosnian woman who agreed to a telephone interview with IslamOnline on the condition of anonymity stated that she was raped on an average of four times per day, often by several different men.

“I even knew one of them. He was my neighbor’s son who I used to give fruit to. He used to play with my son. He knew me but he didn’t care. He knew I was Muslim and the shame that would befall me. But he didn’t care…he just didn’t care.”

She also went on to state “the younger and prettier women had it even worse.”

“Some were raped by almost all the soldiers in the camp one after another. And when the last one was done, they would start all over again. It was like a nightmare…or hell,” she continued amid racking sobs.

Blewitt said that the indictments could cover Bosnian Croats, Muslims and Serbs, Croats, Serbs, members of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, and those responsible for crimes in Macedonia, Danas reported.

Out of a total of 24 suspects believed to be in Yugoslavia, only five have turned themselves in since April, when Yugoslavia adopted a law on cooperating with the tribunal.

On Friday, visiting U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes Pierre-Richard Prosper warned that Washington might reconsider blocking aid to Yugoslavia later this year if Belgrade fails to improve its cooperation with the tribunal, according to President Vojislav Kostunica's office, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

In May, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell unblocked about $40 million in frozen U.S. aid, certifying that Belgrade was cooperating.

But Prosper "indicated a real danger that the U.S. Congress might adopt a new law conditioning the U.S. aid if our country fails to develop cooperation with The Hague tribunal," Kostunica's office said.

However, Stefano Sanino, chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission in Yugoslavia, said Saturday that the level of cooperation had "drastically improved."

Sanino said after an OSCE-sponsored conference this week that Belgrade should look at preparing to conduct its own war crimes trials.

"By 2008, the ICTY will finish its activities and the responsibility of war crimes will fall even more substantially on this country," Sanino said.

Meanwhile, Belgrade radio B92 reported Saturday that Serbian police and ICTY investigators had searched the house of Jovica Stanisic, the Serbian secret police chief during the Milosevic regime.

The search came after Stanisic sought the permission of the Yugoslav government to hand over certain archives to the court, the radio said.