Milosevic still defiant in war crimes court after heart attack scare

Despite fears over his health, the former Yugoslav president Sloboban Milosevic was back in court yesterday and in defiant mood when Europe's biggest war crimes trial since the Second World War resumed after a four-week break.

Mr Milosevic, who is defending himself against 60 charges, including crimes against humanity and genocide for the wars in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia, told judges he should have been "released immediately", and described testimony against him as "a farce", before aggressively cross-examining a witness.

Before the summer recess, a medical report showed he was at risk of a heart attack, and yesterday the judge hinted that concerns over his health could slow the trial, already expected to take two more years. "The medical report on the health of the accused may have some impact on the speed of the trial," Judge Richard May told a prosecuting barrister, Geoffrey Nice.

But prosecutors are under instructions to wrap up their case concerning events in Kosovo by mid-September, and to call witnesses setting out Mr Milosevic's alleged role in ethnic cleansing in Croatia in 1991-92 and the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

The prosecution intends to call two dozen more witnesses before it finishes its case on Kosovo. They are likely to include Mr Milosevic's predecessor, Zoran Lilic, and a former US envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrook. Jackie Rowland, a former BBC Belgrade correspondent, is expected to give evidence today.

In yesterday's hearing, Sadik Xhemajli, an ethnic Albanian, said he watched with binoculars from a hill as Serb soldiers separated 127 men from unarmed civilians in a field near the village of Izbica on 28 March 1999.

Many of the men were killed with high-calibre weapons fired from five to six metres and the crippled and elderly were burnt to death, he said. "I saw 39 men killed with my own eyes," said Mr Xhemajli, who called himself an officer with the Kosovo Liberation Army.

He added that Serb forces returned to Izbica on 2 June, exhumed the bodies, removed them by truck and tried to burn their belongings.

Mr Milosevic denied his forces could have committed the crimes and dismissed the claims as impossible. "There isn't a single officer in the Yugoslav police who could carry out such orders," he said. "This is complete nonsense."

In Belgrade, Mr Milosevic's legal adviser, Zdenko Toman-ovic, was quoted by the Vecernje Novosti newspaper as saying the Kosovo case would "definitely be thrown out". He claimed an acquittal was on the cards.

His client was in good health and "feels excellent", said Mr Tomanovic, but added that Mr Milosevic had been unable to rest over the break because of the "thousands of pages of material" he had to read.

* Angry Macedonians blocked a highway into the capital, Skopje, to prevent Ali Ahmeti, a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader, attending a political rally after two Macedonian policemen were killed in a machine-gun ambush yesterday. Elections are due in less than three weeks.