DICTATOR IN THE DOCK: DAY 1: MEDIEVAL SAVAGERY; Milosevic 'was a monstrous butcher' 260 murdered in just one village.

Byline: DON MACKAY in The Hague

FORMER Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was accused of "almost medieval savagery and calculated cruelty" yesterday as his war crimes trial opened.

Milosevic stands accused of ordering the slaughter of thousands of people during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

In the most important war crimes hearing since the Nuremberg trials of Adolf Hitler's Nazi henchmen at the end of the Second World War, 60-year-old Milosevic faces life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Dressed in smart blue suit, with his white-hair neatly clipped, he lounged back in a chair as the horror of ethnic cleansing, murder and crimes against humanity were outlined by United Nations prosecutors in The Hague.

Milosevic sat glancing round the trial chamber in a converted insurance office block as Case Number IT-02-54T began.

Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told the three UN judges: "The chamber will now begin the trial of this man for the wrongs he is said to have done to the people of his own country and to his neighbours.

"How simple that statement is to make today. How easily those words pass into the record of these proceedings and yet how remarkable it is that I am able to speak them here.

"Today, as never before, we see international justice in action."

The case, she said, would be a powerful demonstration that "no-one is above the law" or beyond the reach of justice.

She said the tribunal should pause to recall "the daily scenes of grief and suffering that came to define armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia."

The deputy prosecutor, British barrister Geoffrey Nice, gave stark examples from three conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, which add up to the 66 charges against Milosevic.

Mr Nice said: "On a day in November 1991, in the village of Vukovar, Croatia, there was a 58-year-old man and his wife who went to a hospital seeking protection. They were beaten, intimidated and abused.

"That man will be a witness and he will be here to tell you that, in all, 260 were slaughtered."

A year later in Visegrad, Bosnia, a young woman was pregnant when the town was taken over by a group, said Mr Nice. "She and many others took to the woods and that night she gave birth to a daughter.

"In due course that woman, her baby and many others, including 45 members of her extended family, were...taken to a house, already prepared with petrol-soaked floors and walls, and burnt alive.

"The baby's screams could be heard for two hours before she, too, succumbed."

Not one flicker of emotion could be seen on the face of the man dubbed the Butcher of Belgrade as he lounged back in his seat with an armed guard on either side.

Mr Nice moved on seven years to Kosovo and the murders and ethnic cleansing that went on there.

"In the town of Qirez some 50 women, including a mother and daughter, were gathered together for safety and taken, not to a mosque as promised, but to a house.

"The mother and the daughter were taken out from time-to-time by the abusing soldiers and would return in a state of obvious fear.

"The daughter and six others were taken out and the others managed to escape.

"But the daughter and the six others were found at the bottom of three different wells after being dropped down them alive."

Mr Nice added: "Did he know what was happening? Of course he did. Why did he not stop these things that were occurring?

"He did not confront his victims.

"He was able to view events from high political office.

"He had these crimes committed for him by others."

Mr Nice added: "In these days when press, radio and television bring wars into our homes as they occur, he cannot not have known."

He said Milosevic had command responsibility for the action of Serb troops and must be found guilty if it could be shown that he failed to prevent crimes he knew were happening.

About 300 witnesses will be called to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, expected to last at least two years and cost well over pounds 150 million.

The prosecution claims that although Milosevic did not pull the trigger himself, he was guilty of the slaughter of innocent civilians.

Ms Del Ponte told the hearing: "These crimes touch every one of us wherever we live because they offend against our deepest principle of human rights and human dignity.

"Our unique contribution is to bring to justice the persons responsible for the worst crimes known to mankind .

"The events themselves were notorious and a new term, 'ethnic cleansing', came into common use in our language.

"Some of the incidents revealed an almost medieval savagery and a calculated cruelty that went far beyond the bounds of legitimate warfare."

She went on: "An excellent tactician, a mediocre strategist, Milosevic did nothing but pursue his ambition at the cost of unspeakable suffering inflicted on those who opposed him or represented a threat for his personal strategy of power."

Milosevic, who qualified as a lawyer but never practised, has refused to recognise the court.

Instead, official pleas of not guilty have been entered on his behalf.

During earlier hearings, he has berated the court, branding it an instrument of his enemies, whom he identified as the western Nato alliance.

He claims that as the leader of Yugoslavia, his role was to defend his country against terrorism and preserve its unity.

Today, Milosevic is expected to give a lengthy opening statement, denouncing the trial as unfair, illegal and biased. Yesterday he grinned smugly and raised one of his bushy eyebrows as the tribunal was shown TV footage during his rise to power, whipping up Serb nationalism and directing Serb anger against other groups.

He told angry Kosovo Serbs in a speech in 1987: "Nobody will be allowed to beat you."

Ms Del Ponte said Milosevic was on trial for his individual actions. The tribunal was not judging the Serb people as a whole.

"No state or organisation is on trial here today."

She went on: "No court can experience the events as the victims themselves did.

"Many victims cannot come before you because they did not survive."

Those who would appear, she said, must find in themselves the "individual courage to give their accounts in public".

Ms Del Ponte accused Milosevic - the first head of state indicted for war crimes while in office - of trying to "undermine the solemnity of these proceedings" by mocking the court.

She said he was the mastermind behind a systematic plan to create a Greater Serbia by ridding the region of ethnic Albanians and Muslims through forced expulsion and murder."

According to Mr Nice,Milosevic wielded great power from behind the scenes because "he controlled events, because he controlled the people who constituted the bodies that...did evil".

The charges list examples of crimes against humanity in Croatia in 1991-92, genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war and crimes against humanity in Kosovo in 1999

Milosevic is also indicted, along with four other senior Serbs still at large, for the murder of 900 Kosovo Albanians and the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 civilians.

The hearing continues.

CAPTION(S):

IN THE DOCK: Slobo yesterday Picture: REUTERS; PROTEST: Outside court yesterday; HORROR: Grave of Muslims killed in Visegrad. Picture: REUTERS