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Alfred Vierling » in english » District Court of Belgrate verdicts against NATO war criminals on 22 sept 2000.

District Court of Belgrate verdicts against NATO war criminals on 22 sept 2000.

(please read also Alfred Vierling’s complaint against 3 Members of Dutch Government involved in NATO’s illegal bombings on at ICTY on this website, under publications nr. 11.)

In the District Court of Belgrade on September 22, 2000, the President of the court, Veroljub Raketic, handed down guilty verdicts against government leaders of NATO countries for war crimes.

The defendants in the trial were: Tony Blair, Robin Cook, George Robertson, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, Jacques Chirac, Hubert Vedrine, Alain Richard, Gerhard Schroeder, Joschka Fischer, Rudolf Scharping, Javier Solana and Wesley Clark – all of which were sentenced to 20 years in a Yugoslav prison.

The Yugoslav government issued arrest warrants for all of them, charging that between March 24 and June 10, 1999, during the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, they carried out:

Crimes against humanity and breaches of international law;
Inciting to an aggressive war;
violation of Yugoslavia’s territorial sovereignty
The attempted murder of Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia;
War crimes against civilians
The use of weapons banned under international law.
On April 18th 2001, it was reported that the former U.S. president Bill Clinton was sent a verdict sentencing him in absentia to 20 years in prison for “crimes against civilians” committed during NATO’s 1999 attack on Yugoslavia. According to news reports, Clinton, and his lawyers, also received a decision on the issuing of a warrant for his arrest.

With the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia, British Prime Minister Tony Blair dropped more bombs on the country than the previous Conservative government did in 18 years. Blair now leads a government which attacks or invades countries without UN approval – the sending of British troops to Sierra Leone, for example (“to secure the airport, safeguard British nationals life etc.”); the continuing criminal attacks by the UK and the U.S. on the defenceless people of Iraq (under the justification of their own self-declared “no-fly-zone’) is another; but it is the attacks against Yugoslavia which have led to the British government ministers being accused of war crimes by numerous human rights groups, and indictments submitted to that effect to the International War Crimes Tribunal by Professor Michael Mandel and others, as well as lawyers from many other countries (see below).

DAs with Iraq, the attacks on Yugoslavia led to widespread loss of civilian life (some claims put the loss at over 1000 life’s) and the almost complete economic destruction of the country – now ranked poorer in Europe than Albania. By all accounts, the NATO bombing was indiscriminate, killing farmers, suburbanites, city dwellers, factory workers, reporters, diplomats, people in cars, buses and trains, hospital patients, the elderly and children.

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