Belgrade accuses Milosevic covered war crimes

BELGRADE – Slobodan Milosevic ordered to cover up the crimes committed in Kosovo. To accuse the deposed Yugoslav president is Dragan Karleusa, number two of the Serbian organized crime department. “Milosevic – Karleusa told journalists – ordered to hide the discovery of about 50 bodies – probably of Kosovo Albanian civilians – found in a trailer lying at the bottom of the Danube in Kladovo, in eastern Serbia. The episode was covered by state secrecy and Milosevic ordered the adoption of “measures” aimed at erasing all evidence “. The order, Karleusa accused, was issued by the then president in March 1999 to the Serbian Interior Minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who was also indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Stojiljkovic imposed the state secret on the case. The accusation formulated by Karleusa directly involves, for the first time in Yugoslavia, Milosevic in a case of war crimes. Serbian newspapers had widely talked about the discovery in the Danube, near the border with Romania, of a refrigerator container containing the bodies of 50 people, mostly elderly, women and children. One of the divers responsible for the recovery had provided ample testimony of the finding to a local criminology magazine.

May 26 2001