The defense of Vlasitimir Djordjevic will be taken over by two Belgrade attorneys, Dragoljub Djordjevic as the lead counsel and Veljko Djurdjic as his co-counsel. Trial of the accused will ‘not begin before next fall’

The trial of Vlastimir Rodja Djordjevic, former Serbian deputy interior minister, is to start on 13 October 2008. The prosecution case is expected to last four to six months

Vlastimir Djordjevic, former chief of the Serbian MUP Public Security Sector, will tomorrow have another opportunity to enter his plea on the charges in the new amended indictment against him. He is now charged with crimes committed on 28 March 1999 in Podujevo by the members of the Scorpions unit. ICTY chief prosecutor will visit Belgrade next week

In its opening statement, the prosecution announces it will rely on insider witnesses to prove the responsibility of Vlastimir Djordjevic for crimes committed by the police in Kosovo and in particular for the clandestine operation to transfer the victims’ bodies to mass graves in Serbia. The accused himself has presented an opening statement. ‘I merely relayed the orders’ to the interior minister, late Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Djordjevic says

Contrary to what the accused general Vlastimir Djordjevic said in his address to the Trial Chamber yesterday – that NATO air campaign was one of the reasons why Albanians fled Kosovo – the first prosecution witness, Kosovo politician and publisher Veton Surroi said that things were worst for the Pristina residents when there were no NATO air strikes; the Serbian police were then able to move more freely and committed crimes

Serbian police officer has given evidence on the massacre in Suva Reka on Kosovo on 26 March 1999 when 44 members of the Berisha family were killed. The witness claims his colleagues from the Suva Reka SUP committed the crime. They put the victims in a pizzeria, dropped a hand grenade inside and kept firing at those who were still alive ‘until no more screams were heard’

General Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense counsel has asked a series of questions about KLA assassination attempts – in which local police officers and the head of the local State Security Department office were killed or injured – in an effort to build the case blaming the Suva Reka crimes on ‘private revenge’ carried out by local police officers, their ‘guests’ from Nis or the state security people

Shyhrete Berisha, one of three survivors of the massacre in which more than 40 Albanian women, children and men were killed in Suva Reka, has described for the third time before the Tribunal how she lost her husband, four children and some 40 members of her family in an attack by Serbian police

In the cross-examination of Mustafa Dragaj, Albanian from Kosovo who survived the execution in Izbica on 28 March 1999, the Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense has implied that among more than a hundred people who were killed there was a significant number of ‘young men’, 50 to 65 years of age and those older than 65 may have been fit for military service… ‘if they wanted to be’

Dr. Liri Loshi describes how he recorded the bodies of more than 100 Albanian civilians, most of them elderly, in the spring of 1999. The indictment against General Vlastimir Djordjevic alleges the victims were executed by the Serbian army and police near the village of Izbica

In his cross-examination at the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic, former military police officer has maintained that members of his unit did not ‘expel’ Kosovo Albanians or ‘ordered and forced them’ to abandon their homes. Soldiers armed with automatic rifles just told them to ‘leave in the direction of Djakovica’

Former crime scene technician from Kladovo Bosko Radojkovic has described his role in the discovery of the refrigerator truck in April 1999 in the river Danube. The defense then tried to prove that the witness and police officers from Kladovo had acted alone when they tried to hide the bodies they had found in the truck The regular procedure was followed only when the accused Vlastimir Djordjevic got on the case

In his evidence at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, former member of the logistics unit in the SAJ base says that in the spring of 1999 he was ordered several times by his superiors to dig pits, used as mass graves to bury the bodies of Albanian civilians brought in trucks from Kosovo

Saranda and Faton Bogujevci, two of five children who survived the execution of 19 women and children in Podujevo, gave evidence at the trial of the Serbian police general Vlastimir Djordjevic

Adnan Merovci, Ibrahim Rugova’s personal secretary, described for the third time their ‘house arrest’ during the air NATO campaign in 1999. During that time, Rugova and Merovci were forced to meet with various Serbian officials

At the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic, Nazlije Bala describes how she and her family, together with hundreds of other Albanian civilians from Kosovo, were expelled from her Pristina apartments on 29 March 1999. They were taken to the railway station and deported to Macedonia by train

Forensic expert Jose Pablo Baraybar has drafted a report for the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, concluding ‘it's improbable or even completely incredible’ that the Kosovo Albanians whose remains were discovered in mass graves in Serbia had been killed in combat

Goran Stoparic, former member of the special police unit Scorpions, has identified four persons who he was ‘sure’ opened fire on nineteen women and children in Podujevo on 28 March 1999. Fourteen persons were killed in that incident

Lawyer from Kosovska Mitrovica Mahmut Halimi described how he avoided the fate of his two friends who were killed in the night of 24 March 1999. After three weeks in hiding, Halimi ended up in Albania

At the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic, the prosecution called evidence on expulsion of tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians in the Vucitrn municipality in the spring of 1999; 105 Albanians were killed. Fedrije Xhafa has testified about events in which her father was killed, her brother wounded and a part of her family expelled to Albania

Doctor Shukri Gerxhaliu witnessed the killing of Albanians near the village of Donje Sudimlje on 2 May 1999. Today, he recounted how the Serbian soldiers and policemen told an elderly civilian they would ‘celebrate the wedding together with him’ and then proceeded to kill his son who got married that day. Police general Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense put it to the witness that the KLA members had mingled with the refugees in the column from which men were singled out and killed

After the massacre in the village of Donje Sudimlje near Vucitrn in the night of 2 May 1999, former president of the Human Rights Council Sadik Kadriu made a list of more than a hundred victims; their names are listed in the appendix of the indictment against police general Vlastimir Djordjevic

Former journalist from Kosovo Shefqet Zogaj has described how he and 80,000 of his compatriots were forced to leave the village of Belanica in early April 1999 and cross the Albanian border. The trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic will be adjourned until 21 April 2009

In their evidence Kosovo Albanians Reshit Selimi and Agim Jemini recount how 13 of their relatives were among the 78 Albanian civilians killed in the village of Celina near Orahovac on 25 March 1999. Selimi and Jemini contend that uniformed police officers – at that time under the jurisdiction of accused general Vlastimir Djordjevic – took part in crimes

According to Hasbi Loki, prosecution witness testifying at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, the twenty-odd men from the village of Kotlina were wearing civilian clothes on 24 March 1999 when they were killed; they were nevertheless buried in the ‘martyr cemetery’ with the KLA insignia on their tombstones

At the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic the prosecution case continues with evidence about crimes against Kosovo Albanians in the Kacanik municipality in the spring of 1999. Sejdi Lami testified about the expulsion and killings in the village of Vata, while Isa Raka described how he lost his wife and their unborn child

In his evidence at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, Kosovo Albanian Ndrec Konaj describes how he and his family were expelled from his house in Pec ‘in five minutes’. They were taken by bus to the Albanian border. The transportation was organized by the army and police

In his evidence at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, Mehmet Mazrekaj, teacher from the Decani area, maintained that the police officers first expelled all Albanians from the village of Drenovac under the pretext of protecting them from the NATO air strikes. The police then found them in places where they had tried to seek shelter and ‘escorted’ them to the Albanian border

Fred Abrahams, Human Rights Watch researcher, contends that his organization sent numerous reports on crimes against Kosovo Albanians in 1998 and 1999 to various Serbian authorities, including the Serbian MUP, where the accused Vlastimir Djordjevic held a high rank. According to Abrahams, there was no response, apart from an occasional statement saying that those incidents were in fact clashes with terrorists

In 1998 and 1999, the police didn’t have an e-mail address, the defense of general Vlastimir Djordjevic contends, and reports on crimes drafted by witness Fred Abrahams and his colleagues from the Human Rights Watch could not be delivered electronically

General Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense has tried to prove that Djordjevic, as the public security chief in 1998 and 1999, had no authority over the police units in Kosovo. The defense has tried to shift the blame on the convicted General Sreten Lukic and the late interior minister Vlajko Stoiljkovic

Former VJ driver testifying under the pseudonym K-54 described for the third time before the Tribunal how Albanian civilians were killed in the village of Trnje in March 1999. This time, however, the witness said that the police were involved in the operation prompting the defense of accused general Vlastimir Djordjevic to react

Former teacher Qamil Shabani has described at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic how his family and he were expelled from the village of Zegra near Gnjilane together with 1,300 other Kosovo Albanians. He and his family then fled to

Testifying under the pseudonym K-81 at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic a Kosovo Albanian from the village of Vladovo near Gnjilane described how he fled Kosovo for Serbia with his family. The witness then left for Macedonia in fear of the army and the police that killed and abused many of his compatriots

Hazir Berisha, one of the three survivors of the massacre of some 40 Albanian men in the village of Cuska, has described in his evidence at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic how, despite being seriously injured, he had managed to escape a burning house

Describing the men who massacred about 40 Albanians in the village of Cuska Tahir Kelmendi -who eye witnessed the incident – said at the trial of general Vlastimir Djordjevic that they wore blue, green and camouflage uniforms. Because they wore black bandanas and had painted faces the witness compared them with ninjas and ‘men from horror movies’

At the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, British forensic anthropologist Jon Sterenberg has given evidence about the role of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the exhumations of the remains of Kosovo Albanians killed in Kosovo and buried at various locations in Serbia. The defense has criticized the witness for saying the bodies were transported from ‘one state to another state’; in his view, it would be more appropriate to say from ‘one place to another place’ within the same state

At the beginning of his third testimony before the Tribunal in The Hague, General Aleksandar Vasiljevic says that paramilitary groups responsible for the crimes against Kosovo Albanians in 1999 were operating as part of the MUP. According to Vasiljevic, the accused Vlastimir Djordjevic ordered the deployment of paramilitary troops

The prosecution continues its case at the trial of Serbian MUP general Vlastimir Djordjevic with the evidence of Sami Parashumti. In the night from 1 to 2 April 1999, Parashumti, an Albanian from Kosovo, observed what was going on in the Milosa Gilica Street in Djakovica from his roof

In the cross-examination of Andras Riedlmayer, US expert on Ottoman cultural heritage, Vlastimir Djordjevic's defense counsel contested his conclusion that Kosovo mosques were destroyed ‘from the ground and not from the air’, arguing that it was based only on ‘common sense and not on technical expertise’

Former chief of the Uzice SUP claims that Vlastimir Djordjevic told him in April 1999 to organize the burial of bodies of Kosovo Albanians that surfaced in the Lake Perucac in Central Serbia and not to tell the investigative bodies

Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense contends that a prosecution witness, former chief of the Uzice SUP, decided on his own to bury the bodies discovered in the Lake Perucac in April 1999. The witness denies this, claiming that the accused instructed him what to do with the bodies. At that time Djordjevic was chief of the Public Security Department in the Serbian MUP

Former operations officer in the Pristina Corps and the 3rd Army, Milan Djakovic today confirmed that the entries in his notebook were indeed accurate; according to the notebook, the accused general Vlastimir Djordjevic regularly attended the meetings of the Joint Command in 1998. At the same time, however, the witness denied that the Joint Command ever existed, claiming it was just short-hand for ‘coordination meetings’ of the army and the police

Former head of the US Kosovo observers contends that in the spring of 1999 the accused general Vlastimir Djordjevic was ‘very well informed’ about the positions and activities of the police in Kosovo

Head of the US Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission contends that in 1998 the police acted as a military infantry unit when they entered Albanian villages in coordinated actions following the ‘artillery preparation’ by the army

Canadian military analyst claims there are no forgeries among the Yugoslav Army documents the Serbian authorities handed over to the OTP investigators; the defense has put it to him some documents were forged

At the trial of the former chief of the Serbian MUP Public Security Department, an excavator operator from Djakovica claims that in the spring of 1999 he dug out bodies of Albanians on three separate occasions, each time on police orders and with police supervision. Bodies were then loaded onto refrigerated trucks and driven away

Former commander of the Special Anti-terrorist Units (SAJ) says the accused Vlastimir Djordjevic informed him that the Scorpions had been sent to Kosovo. On 28 March 1999 members of that unit shot 19 women, children and old men in Podujevo

The defense of former Public Security Department chief indicated in its opening statement it intended to prove that there was no joint criminal enterprise aimed at expelling the Albanian population from Kosovo. The defense will also prove that there was no Joint Command of the army and the police and that Djordjevic had no effective control over the police

Testifying in his own defense, police general Vlastimir Djordjevic described his role in the transfer of the Albanians’ bodies from a refrigerated truck that had sunk near Kladovo to Belgrade and in the burial of bodies that had surfaced in the Perucac lake

The prosecutor showed Djordjevic a series of documents that according to him confirm the existence of the Joint Command of the VJ and Serbian MUP for Kosovo. Vlastimir Djordjevic, former Public Security Department chief, nevertheless denied that such a body had ever been established

In his cross-examination, police general Vlastimir Djordjevic claimed that local population ‘didn’t take weapons because they liked it": they were forced to defend themselves. The accused denied that the Serbian MUP controlled the village units and that ‘those forces committed crimes against citizens of different ethnic background’

Police general Vlastimir Djordjevic says that he is ‘willing to accept responsibility for an ill-judged act’: his failure to do anything when he suspected that interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic had taken part in an operation to hide the remains of Kosovo Albanians

The former chief the Serbian MUP Public Security Department noted he ‘didn’t know about the crimes of the police in Kosovo’ adding that he was not in charge of those units. Djordjevic claimed that if he had been responsible he would have said so to the judges ‘loud and clear’

Slobodan Petkovic, former chief of the Department for Atomic, Chemical and Biological Weapons in the VJ, claimed at the Kosovo Six trial that the NATO campaign ‘could have influenced’ the migrations of Kosovo Albanians in 1999. Today, two years later, at the trial of General Vlastimir Djordjevic, Petkovic said that the air strikes were ‘certainly’ a reason why the population left

Former chief of the VJ General Staff Branko Krga says that the KLA and NATO created the ‘appearance of humanitarian disaster’ in Kosovo, adding that he knew the army was blamed for the ordeal of the civilians fleeing the province

In his evidence in the defense of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic former chief of the VJ General Staff Branko Krga admitted that the military intelligence officers learned in the spring of 1999 that there were two mass graves near Prizren. Krga however claimed that it was the police and not the army that was responsible to undertake investigation. Are Russians friends of Serbs if Jews run their country?

Retired general Djordje Curcin noted that Serbian forces were determined to respect the civilians’ rights. In April 1999, Curcin said, he drafted an order on behalf of the VJ General Staff: the defense against the NATO campaign was to be carried out with full respect of international humanitarian law

Denying that the Serbian security forces were involved in the Kosovo crimes, retired general Djordje Curcin claimed that he and other VJ officers were given preventive training in international humanitarian law. According to Curcin, there’s nothing controversial in the fact that he regularly met with and supported one of the most wanted fugitives from international justice, Ratko Mladic

In his statement to the defense, Rade Cucak said that in 1999 more than 800,000 Albanian civilians left Kosovo. Now the former chief of the VJ Border Service Department contends that during his visits to his units in the province he never saw any mass crossings of the border, adding as a caveat that the police, not the army, was in charge of border crossings

Police general Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense contests the authenticity of a letter sent by General Pavkovic to chief of General Staff Ojdanic. In the letter, Pavkovic informs Ojdanic of the police crimes on Kosovo. The defense suggested that the letter was logged at a later date, after Pavkovic succeeded Ojdanic. If that is indeed the case, then the 3rd Army commander wrote the letter to himself, in an effort to avoid prosecution for Kosovo crimes

Retired colonel Kosta Novakovic contends that in 1998 and 1999, the VJ complied fully with the agreement establishing the OSCE-run Kosovo Verification Mission. Vlastimir Djordjevic is one of signatories of the agreement. The prosecution noted that the Kosovo Verification Mission never received any data on the troop strength and quantity of weapons in the province

Police general Vlastimir Djordjevic is trying to defend himself against the charges of crimes against Albanian civilians in 1999 with an order issued by Dragoljub Ojdanic, Chief of the VJ General Staff, in which he demands that the crimes be prevented. The order was issued a month after Louise Arbour, the then chief prosecutor, warned the FRY leadership in writing of grave human rights violations in the province

Retired VJ general Milos Djosan is testifying in the defense of former chief of Serbian MUP Public Security Department Vlastimir Djordjevic. Djosan says he never received reports about the police role in the murder of 20 Albanian women and children in the Milos Gilic Street in Djakovica in April 1992. Djosan couldn’t confirm that the crime actually did happen

Retired VJ colonel Milutin Filipovic claims he saw ‘fake exodus’ in Pristina during the NATO campaign in 1999: columns of ‘circular and semi-circular type’ in which Albanian civilians left the town only to return to their point of origin

In his evidence at the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic, retired VJ colonel Milutin Filipovic said he had carried NATO’s spent depleted uranium rounds from a Pristina suburb to the center ‘with bare hands’. When the prosecutor realized it was not an interpretation error, he remarked that the witness was really a ‘very special man’ because he survived direct contact with radioactive ordnance

In his testimony at the trial of General Djordjevic, former Kosovo policeman Branko Mladenovic contends that in the spring of 1999 Kosovo Albanians told him that they were fleeing the province in fear of NATO and the KLA. The prosecutor put it to Mladenovic that maybe they couldn’t tell him the real reason because he was a policeman, and the police was a reason why they left. The witness replied, ‘I don’t agree with that question’

Former investigating judge from Pristina Danica Marinkovic gives evidence in the defense of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic. The defense lawyer examined Marinkovic about crime scene investigations involving the KLA and NATO attacks, about the way in which crimes were investigated under continental law and all manner of things, apart from the crimes General Vlastimir Djordjevic is charged with

The incident in the village of Racak in Kosovo is not listed in the indictment against police general Vlastimir Djordjevic, yet Djordjevic’s defense today tried to prove that KLA members, not civilians, were killed on 15 January 1999 there

Confronted with numerous allegations about torture of Kosovo Albanians in Serbian prisons in 1998 and 1998, former investigating judge from Kosovo giving evidence in the defense of Vlastimir Djordjevic asked the prosecution not to show ‘only negative examples’. Danica Marinkovic wanted the prosecutor to show ‘something positive’, because it looked as if ‘there was slavery in Kosovo’

The defense witness called by police general Vlastimir Djordjevic contends that in the spring of 1999, the KLA urged its fellow Albanians to leave Kosovo. At the same time, the Serbian police tried to convince them ‘nicely and politely’ to stay

The prosecution showed the witness at the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic several documents in which witnesses accuse him of taking part in the expulsions and physical abuse of Kosovo Albanians in 1998 and 1999. Former police chief in Decani Vukmir Mircic said that it was ‘a fabrication’ to defame the MUP and the Serbian state

Zoran Stankovic, a pathologist from Belgrade, was called to give evidence by the defense of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic. Stankovic contends that the findings of French and Austrian forensic experts following their enquiry into the killing of Albanian civilians on several locations on Kosovo in 1999 are ‘unacceptable’. Contradicting the allegations in the indictment, Stankovic claims that murdered in the villages of Kotlina and Izbica were not civilians

Zoran Stankovic, pathologist from Belgrade, contends at the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic that the number of bullet casings found at sites where crimes against Kosovo Albanians were committed in 1999 doesn’t match the number of gunshot wounds found on the bodies. The prosecutor reminded the witness that foreign forensic teams did not arrive in Kosovo until the NATO campaign ended. In the meantime, evidence could have been eliminated or lost

Protected witness testifying under the pseudonym K-87 testified that General Vlastimir Djordjevic instructed him in the spring of 1999 to bury the bodies of Albanian civilians at the SAJ training ground in Batajnica. The witness added that Djordjevic appeared ‘pensive and edgy’, doing things ‘reluctantly’ on the orders of interior minister Vlajko Stoiljkovic

With the cross-examination of Radomir Milasinovic, a political scientist from Belgrade, the defense rested its five-month case at the trial of police general Vlastimir Djordjevic. Djordjevic is charged with crimes against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. The parties will deliver their closing arguments on 13 and 14 July 2010

In his closing argument at the trial for crimes in Kosovo in 1999, the prosecutor noted that the former chief of the Public Security Department in the Serbian police, Vlastimir Djordjevic, played a key part in the effort to cover up the crimes by removing the bodies from the province to several locations in Serbia and had effective control over the police units that deported and murdered Albanian civilians

After the prosecution called for a sentence between 35 years and life in prison for General Vlastimir Djordjevic, the defense in its closing argument tried to play down the role of the accused in the deportations and murders of Kosovo Albanians in 1999 and the transfer of bodies from Kosovo to Serbia

Former Serbian deputy interior minister Vlastimir Djordjevic was found guilty of participation in the joint criminal enterprise that resulted in the killing of hundreds of Albanian civilians and the expulsion of thousands of them from Kosovo in 1999. The Trial Chamber found that the accused had full control over the police units that committed the gravest crimes. Djordjevic’s role in the effort to transfer the dead bodies from Kosovo to Serbia was especially highlighted by the Trial Chamber

In its notice of appeal against the Trial Chamber’s judgment to police general Vlastimir Djordjevic for Kosovo crimes, the prosecution notes Djordjevic should be convicted of persecution through sexual violence. The prosecution has called for a harsher sentence: instead of 27 years in prison, Djordjevic should get life sentence

The defense contends that the Trial Chamber in its judgment made erroneous conclusions about the joint criminal enterprise that existed on Kosovo in 1999 and about the role of General Vlastimir Djordjevic in it. The defense therefore urges the judges of the Appeals Chamber to either acquit him or to commute his prison sentence. The Trial Chamber sentenced him to 27 years in prison

The appellate hearing in the case against police general Vlastimir Djordjevic will most likely be held in late 2012 or early 2013, it was announced at a status conference. Djordjevic had no complaints about the conditions of his detention or health

After he received the translation of the trial judgment, Serbian MUP general Vlastimir Djordjevic admitted he was responsible for burying the bodies of Kosovo Albanians in Batajnica. Djordjevic also admitted he knew the bodies had been found in the Perucac lake. However, Djordjevic denied he had the ‘leading role’ in the bid to cover-up the crime, claiming he ‘was dragged into those terrible events at a later stage’

At the appellate hearing, the defense of police General Vlastimir Djordjevic tried to convince the judges that his role in the crimes against Kosovo Albanians was ‘exaggerated’. The prosecution claimed that the Trial Chamber didn’t err when it identified Djordjevic as a key participant in the joint criminal enterprise. The defense called for Djordjevic’s acquittal or a milder sentence while the prosecution urged the judges to sentence him to life for his crimes

The Appeals Chamber has confirmed the findings related to the existence of the joint criminal enterprise aimed at expelling Albanians from Kosovo in 1999 and the involvement of the accused in it and has granted several grounds of appeal submitted by the police general Vlastimir Djordjevic’s defense. The Appeals Chamber has also granted one of the prosecution’s grounds of appeal, but it nevertheless reduced Djordjevic’s sentence from 27 to 18 years in prison

Theodor Meron, president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, has decided that the police general Vlastimir Djordjevic is to serve the rest of his 18-year sentence in Germany. Djordjevic was found guilty of crimes against Kosovo Albanians