Statement Of The International Committee To Defend Slobodan Milosevic
17.06.2001.
The International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic held a Working Committee meeting in Belgrade on June 17th.
In documents which were acknowledged on that occasion, the International Committee repeated its demand for the immediate release of President Milosevic from custody and accented the danger to the sovereignty and economic future of Yugoslavia as well as to International Law if the threats being made by political extremists to extradite Mr. Milosevic to the Hague Tribunal are carried out.
The Committee has approved and published the report of its legal representative, well-known Canadian attorney Christopher Black, who indicated that there is not the least evidence that Milosevic is guilty. He stated that his further imprisonment deeply undermines legality and human rights and characterized this entire process as political. These conclusions were reached following his visit to Belgrade and discussions with Yugoslav state and justice representatives.
It was pointed out that the illegitimate Hague Tribunal has been used as an instrument of NATO aggression.
Respected legal experts from several countries have evaluated the claims made by some leaders of the Belgrade regime. According to the DOS claims, the extradition of President Milosevic must proceed despite the fact that the Constitutions of Serbia and Yugoslavia explicitly forbid such extraditions, must proceed even in the absence of an appropriate law. The legal experts find such claims to be entirely contrary to the most elementary understanding of law, dangerous for democracy and sovereignty and very immoral. If such a legal precedent were established, Yugoslavia would be considered responsible for all the catastrophical consequences of NATO policy in the Balkans. Yugoslavia would, in that case, lose its right to compensation for war damage and be forced to pay war compensation to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, possibly involving several billion dollars.
Germany extradited Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic after the adoption of an appropriate law, but that law forbids the extradition of German citizens, because the German Constitution forbids such action; so does the Constitution of Yugoslavia.
The Committee demands that the current Belgrade regime respect the principles of right reign and therefore release Slobodan Milosevic immediately as well as all political prisoners.
The special document accents the example of Macedonia whose survival is endangered by terrorist forces created and controlled by NATO intelligence and military structures. This example is striking, because Macedonia signed a partnership agreement with NATO and put all its resources at NATO’s disposal.
At the meeting, the Committee, whose membership consists of nearly 80 respected persons from more than 20 countries, elected former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark as its Co-Chairman as well as adding three more Vice-Chairmen, from Italy, Greece and Ukraine.
Agence France Presse. 21 June 2001.
BELGRADE — An official of an international committee set up to defend Slobodan Milosevic Thursday warned of catastrophic consequences for Yugoslavia if the former president is handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
“Be sure that misery, poverty, famine and total destruction would prevail in the country” if Milosevic is sent to The Hague, said Mikhail Kuznecov, deputy chairman of the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic.
“Do not have any illusions that the United States or NATO will give you money and help you rebuild your economy?” he told reporters.
The committee was set up on March 24, just a week before Milosevic’s arrest by Belgrade reformers on charges of abuse of power and corruption, to clear the ex-president’s name over the war crimes indictment by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). NATO “is aiming to destroy Yugoslavia and its citizens,” Kuznecov said, adding that Milosevic “is in prison since he was the only one to confront the Alliance, and even managed to stop it.”
He said that no “law can legalise” Milosevic’s extradition to ICTY, as the move “is clearly banned by the Constitutions of Yugoslavia and Serbia.”
The committee, chaired by Bulgarian MP Velko Valkanov, and grouping figures like former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and writer Harold Pinter, said it has members from 20 countries throughout the world.
Its activities are supported by more than 600 prominent figures from 30 countries, said a statement on its website.
Kuznecov said the committee has set up an international working group to monitor legal procedures against Milosevic, led by Canadian lawyer Christopher Black, who had visited the former president in prison last week.
Black was among the lawyers who in 1999 brought war crimes charges against NATO leaders for the bombing campaign on Yugoslavia.
