From: "Dave Kuehne" <dkuehne@erols.com> To: "Dave" <dkuehne@erols.com> Subject: Bill Clinton convicted of war crimes Date: Sunday, September 24, 2000 1:27 AM
Source: Virtual New York http://www.vny.com/
Belgrade gives Clinton, others 20 years in jail http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=120278
Thursday, 21 September 2000 13:19 (ET)
By STEFAN RACIN BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- The district court in Belgrade Thursday sentenced President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and 13 other top Western and NATO leaders to a maximum 20 years in prison for the use of weapons prohibited under international law and crimes against the civilian population during last year's NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia.
Veroljub Raketic, the presiding judge, said the arrest warrants would be issued for the convicted leaders and their sentences would start as soon as they are arrested.
During the four-day trial in the biggest courtroom in the Palace of Justice, in which 14 seats labeled with the names of the accused were left vacant, the officially appointed lawyer defending Clinton told the court he could cite as an extenuating circumstances that Clinton came from "an incomplete family and lived with a step-father which probably left a mark on his overall behavior."
Another court-appointed lawyer defending Albright asked the court to take into account her repressed psychological state as a woman subordinated to the U.S. president and the fact that she had never before been sentenced for war crimes.
Apart from Clinton and Albright the convicted included Defense Secretary William Cohen; British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook; French President Jacques Chirac, Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine and Defense Minister Alain Richard; German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher and Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping; the former and present NATO Secretaries General Javier Solana and Lord George Robertson; and the former NATO Supreme Commander in Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark.
They were ordered to pay legal costs within 15 days of the sentences taking effect under pain of enforcement.
The indictments said that the accused were responsible for NATO forces using 31,000 shells each with 300 grams of depleted uranium at eight locations in Serbia and Montenegro and that 10 tons of this kind of ammunition were dropped on Kosovo. This specifically polluted the environments of villages in the vicinity of Vranje, Bujanovac and Presevo in southern Serbia causing various types of cancer and death, according to the indictments, the court said.
NATO also dropped a huge quantity of cluster bombs in the areas of Nis, Sombor, Kurumlija, Podujevo, Kraljevo, Novi Sad, Mount Kopaonik and other places, killing 34 people including an 8-month pregnant woman and leaving many other people seriously or slightly injured, the indictment said.
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