THE HAGUE: A pregnant woman and children massacred in a pizzeria, a disabled woman burnt alive - grim allegations of Serb "ethnic cleansing" piled up yesterday as Mr Slobodan Milosevic complained of ill-treatment at his trial.
Gory tales of shooting, looting, torching and deportation filled the courtroom as survivors of the 1999 Serb crackdown on Kosovo Albanians, which prompted NATO air strikes, testified against the former Yugoslav president at The Hague war crimes tribunal.
A doctor from the town of Suva Reka said 40 to 50 men, women and children - many his relatives, including a pregnant woman - fled to a pizzeria from a house set alight by Serb police.
"Policemen shot pitilessly with automatic weapons and threw grenades at them . . . Trucks came and loaded up 40 to 50 bodies and took them towards Prizren," said Dr Agron Berisha, who heard of the massacre from a few survivors who jumped from the trucks.
Dr Berisha told the court how Serb forces shot dead his young male relatives: "The police emptied their magazines into their bodies." Terrified Albanians sheltering inside a house were shot and the house was then set ablaze.
"The house was enveloped in flames. The rafters began to fall on the bodies, which were enveloped in flames so the bodies were buried," said Dr Berisha (38). "It seemed the criminals had that as their daily business and were well trained and knew where to leave the bodies so they were burned up."
Mr Milosevic is on trial for crimes against humanity in Kosovo and Croatia and genocide in Bosnia. He has declined to plead, so judges at the UN tribunal have entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
Refusing to recognise a court he says is a tool of his Western foes, he has appointed no lawyers and is defending himself, meaning he can cross-examine witnesses.
"Quite obviously you know nothing of which I am asking you," Mr Milosevic said after relentless questioning of the witness preceding Dr Berisha failed to yield the answers he wanted.
"I must say, gentlemen, that you are bringing in witnesses of this kind to ill-treat me," he said as he grilled a retired farmer, Mr Halil Morina, who said Serbs torched three-quarters of his village in March 1999 after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia.
Mr Morina told the trial's ninth day that Serb forces burned a paralysed ethnic Albanian woman alive in her home, murdered a toddler and blew up a mosque during their crackdown on Kosovo. - (Reuters)