Slobodan Milosevic threw down the gauntlet to prosecutors at his war crimes trial today, challenging them to provide solid evidence he ordered Serb atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.
The former Yugoslav leader, accused of genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war and crimes against humanity in Croatia in 1991-92 and in Kosovo in 1999, defied prosecutors to prove he ordered killings in the southern Serbian province.
"I had nothing to do with crimes and crime sites," Mr Milosevic heatedly told judges and prosecutors on the seventh day of his war crimes trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
"You can speak of crime sites only if you have evidence I was present at the site of the crime and that I committed those crimes," said Mr Milosevic, who has accused the court of staging a show trial to discredit him as a peacemaker in the Balkans.
It is a foregone conclusion that prosecutors can satisfy the United Nations-mandated court that many massacres, tortures, rapes and mass expulsions took place in the three conflicts.
The challenge for the lawyers is to show that Mr Milosevic himself either ordered such atrocities, knew of them yet failed to halt them or, at least, knew about them after they were committed but failed to punish the perpetrators.
Prosecutors have set out to prove Mr Milosevic was at the top of a "chain of command" in the conflicts.
Kosovo was always an internationally recognized part of Milosevic's rump Yugoslav state - comprised mostly of Serbia - and he was by then undisputed commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav armed forces accused of carrying out war crimes in the province.
Bosnia and Croatia, in contrast, were new states which had seceded from Belgrade's federation. Mr Milosevic operated in those neighboring states in collaboration with disaffected local Serb minorities, who set up their own armies and governments.
The trial, expected to last at least two years, opened with allegations on Kosovo. Evidence on Croatia and Bosnia will follow. Judges have entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf and named three "friends of the court" to protect his interests.
Mr Milosevic has accused NATO - which bombed Yugoslavia for 11 weeks in 1999 to end a Serb crackdown against separatists in the majority ethnic Albanian province - of murdering civilians in Kosovo and prosecutors of hurling "untruths" at the world.
The 60-year-old former Serb strongman hit out again at prosecutors by accusing them of using every opportunity to call on witnesses to repeat charges against him and tarnish the memory of his 13-year rule in Belgrade.
"We will probably get down to the prosecutor's driver and hairdresser," Milosevic said in a pointed reference to bleach-blonde Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
Presiding judge Richard May curtly stepped in to end Mr Milosevic's speech. "Mr Milosevic be quiet please," the black and scarlet robed English judge said.
Prosecutors called on Australian police officer and war crimes tribunal investigator Stephen Spargo to present maps of Kosovo and sites from which they said about 800,000 Kosovo Albanians were expelled by Serb forces in "ethnic cleansing."
Judge May earlier deemed unwarranted a prosecution plan to call on their lead investigator on Kosovo, Kevin Curtis, to summarize alleged ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Prosecutors outlined the substance of their case in detail during their opening arguments at the start of the trial last week. There was no value in repeating this, May said.
Curtis led a team which unearthed bodies of victims of alleged atrocities in Kosovo.
Hundreds of witnesses are expected to testify at The Hague tribunal on charges against Mr Milosevic. Prosecutors said they were ready to call on "crime base" witnesses next.