I helped kill Kosovan baby, soldier tells Milosevic trial

A former Yugoslav soldier gave harrowing testimony yesterday of how he helped to murder a screaming year-old baby during a massacre of civilians in Kosovo.

The evidence, given at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic by video link, is the most graphic description of atrocities in the province to be heard at the trial.

"What I remember most vividly is how ... there was a baby and it had been shot with three bullets and it was screaming unbelievably loud," said the witness as he recounted the killing of 15 civilians in the Kosovan village of Trnje.

"Never a night goes by without my dreaming of that child who was hit with that bullet and was crying," said the Montenegrin soldier. He was identified to the court only as K41.

The evidence failed to impress Mr Milosevic, who yawned as the ex-soldier began. During cross-examination the former president of Yugoslavia said the evidence was fabricated. The account is likely to prove important for the prosecution as it attempts to hold Mr Milosevic responsible for events in Kosovo.

K41 told how his unit first shelled, then entered the village of Trnje in March 1999, just after Nato began bombing Yugoslavia. As between 80 and 100 soldiers approached Trnje, an army captain gestured towards the village and told sergeants that on that day "no one should remain alive there".

The killing spree began with houses and a haystack being torched. Albanian men on the street were shot on sight. When a curtain in one window twitched, soldiers forced 15 people out at gunpoint, including women, old people and at least one baby. All were shot in the courtyard of the house.

According to the witness, some soldiers were reluctant to shoot, and one private shouted "I can't do that" when ordered to kill an elderly man. The sergeant then set an example.

"The sergeant said, 'This is how it's done', and killed him with a burst of gunfire to the head," said K41, who told the court that he had never been punished for his role. K41 said that the baby was about a year old, possibly younger. He added that he never saw any evidence of the Kosovo Liberation Army operating in the village – the pretext for the attack.

Mr Milosevic, who has been defending himself since his trial started in February, is charged with ultimate responsibility for the murder of about 900 Kosovo Albanians and the expulsion of 800,000 people in the southern Serb province.

Yesterday's testimony came near the end of the prosecution's case on Kosovo, which is expected to conclude next week. A two-week break will be then held before prosecutors begin outlining their Bosnia and Croatia case.

During cross-examination Mr Milosevic suggested the witness was guilty of armed robbery, and asked why he had never reported to superiors the crimes committed by Yugoslav Army soldiers.

"How could we report them to anyone? Report them to the same people who ordered us to do that? Is that who we were supposed to report it to?" K41 retorted.

Before cross-examination, the presiding judge, Richard May, who is overseeing Mr Milosevic's epic trial, formally warned K41 that he was not obliged to give any evidence that could incriminate himself. But the witness insisted he had wanted to testify to unburden himself of things that had been troubling him for the past three years, to "feel easier in my soul". Addressing Mr Milosevic directly was a considerable help, he said.

"When I tell all this truth to the person who's the most responsible, I already feel better," K41 said in Serbian.