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Wednesday, April 4, 2001

Kertes, along with Milosevic and two former federal deputy prime ministers, Nikola Sainovic and Jovan Zebic, has been accused of funneling $130 million in taxpayer money to rebel groups in Bosnia and Croatia.

Serbia Police Minister Dusan Mihailovic said that if convicted, Milosevic could face the death penalty.

Mihailovic told a reporters at a news conference: "We have evidence from witnesses that Milosevic had organized the plunder of the budget. We also have indications that Milosevic was implicated in the more serious crimes which carry the death penalty."

Milosevic, held in Belgrade's central prison since he was arrested at his villa Sunday, did not attend the hearing. However, he did send a 115-line, typewritten appeal to the district public prosecutor asking for his release on bail from a 30-day detention, claiming that he had worked "exclusively in the interests of the state and the people." The appeal was rejected, Belgrade media reported.

In his appeal, Milosevic wrote that state funds had been used to assist Serbs living across the River Drina outside Yugoslavia and for the purchase of arms, ammunition and other equipment for rebel armies in the Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb enclave, and in the Serb-dominated region of Krajina in Croatia. The former Yugoslav leader has denied using the money for personal gain.

"The same applies to spending for equipment of security and special anti-terrorist forces with everything from light armaments to helicopters, which are still there today," Milosevic wrote.

Officials at the U.N. criminal tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted Milosevic for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, were quoted Tuesday by Sense News Agency as saying that Milosevic's admission to having financed Serb military and paramilitary forces during the 1992-95 armed conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia would reveal that these conflicts had an international character, which is a condition for the crimes committed in them to qualify as grave violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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