Milosevic links Kosovo rebels with al-Qaida
Slobodan Milosevic has claimed al-Qaida members assisted Balkan rebels in their fight for independence from Serbia.
The former Yugoslav president made the allegations while cross-examining Kosovo Albanian Sabit Kadriu, a 41-year-old human rights worker.
Mr Kadriu has told the court how Serb forces murdered more than 100 civilians as they tried to flee Kosovo in 1999.
Milosevic quoted from an alleged FBI report, dated December 18, 2001, which he said proved that al-Qaida had established a terrorist network in Kosovo to help the Muslim population. He identified the report as a Congressional statement from the intelligence service.
The authenticity of the document could not be independently confirmed and he gave no details on how he obtained it.
Milosevic first asked Kadriu if he knew anything about "mujahadeen atrocities" in Kosovo or if he had heard of the Saudi man held responsible for the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
The former Yugoslav leader, on trial for war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia during the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s, then read out from the document in English.
"Al-Qaida supports Muslim fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo" among other regions, he read, referring to the death of civilians in the region. He said "the al-Qaida branch of the KLA" was specialized in killing in Kosovo."
Sabit Kadriu recounted events during NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, describing how Serb forces fired machine guns and grenades at a column of thousands of ethnic Albanians fleeing under a white banner near the end of the bloody Kosovo war.
Mr Kadriu, a survivor of the shelling, was later imprisoned and tortured by Serb police, he said, before being expelled to Albania in May 1999. He was the 14th witness to testify in Milosevic's trial which started February 12.
