Small Fire Ends Milosevic Session
A fire started in the cafeteria of the U.N. war crimes tribunal Tuesday, prompting authorities to evacuate the building minutes before Slobodan Milosevic's trial was set to resume.
"There will be no Milosevic hearing today," tribunal spokesman Jim Landal said. The trial would resume on Wednesday, he said.
Fire brigades arrived at the scene as helmeted policemen went into the building. Although firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze, the downtown building remained full of thick smoke. No injuries were immediately reported.
A tribunal spokesman said the fire started on the second floor in a fryer in the kitchen.
A security guard who spoke on condition of anonymity said no one would be allowed back in until all rooms were ventilated. Tribunal staff, media and others were taken to a congress center across the street.
Milosevic's legal adviser, Zdenko Tomanovic, told The Associated Press that Milosevic had been returned to his detention facility a 30-minute drive away for security reasons.
The former Yugoslav president's trial for crimes against humanity will resume Wednesday, the tribunal spokesman said. Other hearings at the court also were delayed Tuesday, but it was unclear when they would resume.
Milosevic is on trial on 66 charges for war crimes and genocide during Yugoslavia's violent breakup in the 1990s. The former Yugoslav president could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted on any count.
Victim after victim of "ethnic cleansing" against Albanians in the Serb province of Kosovo has told the court of killing, torching and deportation in what prosecutors say was Milosevic's bid to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia.
"They marked their houses with a white cloth. It resembled a fascist genocide," said Kosovo Albanian former schoolteacher Qamil Shabani as he described how Serbian residents of his village hung white sheets on their houses to deter attack when a 1999 Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians was launched.
Shabani, the 13th prosecution witness, said Serbian forces deployed in his Zegra village grew enraged and brutal when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia in response to the violent crackdown.
"The Albanian population was very cheerful (at the NATO strikes) but the Serb population was very angry and this rage turned into retaliation against the Albanian population," the father-of-four recounted on the 14th day of the trial.
Shabani fled after Serb forces shot and killed the brother of a local Kosovo Albanian politician and wounded his daughter. "That was when the Albanian residents began to shed their blood. They were defenseless...in their own houses," he said.