Belgrade gives Clinton, others 20 years in jail

Thursday, 21 September 2000 13:19 (ET)


Belgrade gives Clinton, others 20 years in jail By STEFAN RACIN

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- The district court in Belgrade

Thursday sentenced President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and 13 other top Western and NATO leaders to a maximum 20
years in prison for the use of weapons prohibited under international
law and crimes against the civilian population during last year's NATO
air campaign against Yugoslavia.

Veroljub Raketic, the presiding judge, said the arrest warrants would
be issued for the convicted leaders and their sentences would start as
soon as they are arrested.

During the four-day trial in the biggest courtroom in the Palace of
Justice, in which 14 seats labeled with the names of the accused were
left vacant, the officially appointed lawyer defending Clinton told the
court he could cite as an extenuating circumstances that Clinton came
from "an incomplete family and lived with a step-father which probably
left a mark on his overall behavior."

Another court-appointed lawyer defending Albright asked the court to
take into account her repressed psychological state as a woman
subordinated to the U.S. president and the fact that she had never
before been sentenced for war crimes.

Apart from Clinton and Albright the convicted included Defense
Secretary William Cohen; British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook; French President Jacques Chirac, Foreign Minister
Hubert Vedrine and Defense Minister Alain Richard; German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher and Defense Minister
Rudolf Scharping; the former and present NATO Secretaries General
Javier Solana and Lord George Robertson; and the former NATO Supreme
Commander in Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark.

They were ordered to pay legal costs within 15 days of the sentences
taking effect under pain of enforcement.

The indictments said that the accused were responsible for NATO forces

using 31,000 shells each with 300 grams of depleted uranium at eight
locations in Serbia and Montenegro and that 10 tons of this kind of
ammunition were dropped on Kosovo. This specifically polluted the
environments of villages in the vicinity of Vranje, Bujanovac and
Presevo in southern Serbia causing various types of cancer and death,
according to the indictments, the court said.

NATO also dropped a huge quantity of cluster bombs in the areas of Nis,
Sombor, Kurumlija, Podujevo, Kraljevo, Novi Sad, Mount Kopaonik and
other places, killing 34 people including an 8-month pregnant woman and
leaving many other people seriously or slightly injured, the indictment
said.

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