The New York Times

Wednesday, May 26, 1999

LAWSUIT

CIVIL ACTION ACCUSES YUGOSLAVS OF WAR CRIMES

By RAYMOND BONNER

WASHINGTON -- Two Kosovar Albanians filed a lawsuit Tuesday in a U.S. District Court charging President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, his wife and senior members of his government with genocide and other war crimes.

In their civil action filed in Boston, the plaintiffs say that as part of a "deliberate campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' " the defendants, including Zeljko Raznjatovic, the paramilitary commander known as Arkan, violated laws of the United States as well as international law.

A lawyer involved in the case, Paul Williams, said the lawsuit was intended in part "to send a message" to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, sitting in the Hague, that it was possible, and relatively easy, to lay out a case against Milosevic.

"You don't need all these highly sophisticated intelligence intercepts," said Williams, a former State Department lawyer and now a professor of law at American University.

Under pressure from the NATO countries since the bombing began, the war crimes tribunal has been gathering evidence against Milosevic and it is widely assumed that it will hand down an indictment of Milosevic in the next few weeks.

The State Department had no comment on the lawsuit.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Abram Chayes, said that he did not expect Milosevic or any of the other defendants to appear to present their side of the case or answer the charges.

"My expectation is we will get a default judgment," Chayes said. The challenge then would be to find assets belonging to the defendants to be used to satisfy any monetary award the court might make.

The legal basis for the lawsuit is found in a law passed more than 200 years ago, the Alien Tort Claims Act, which was intended to punish piracy on the high seas.

The act was invoked in 1980 against a foreigner when the family of a man tortured to death in Paraguay successfully sued a Paraguayan police inspector.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of similar suits, among them actions against the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos as well as against an Argentine general and an Ethiopian military commander.

The wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, was charged with war crimes and genocide in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in 1993. He initially asked a lawyer to appear on his behalf to contest the court's jurisdiction but Karadzic has since declined to participate, and the case is now in fact-finding stages.

The lawsuit against Milosevic and the others does not identify the Kosovar plaintiffs by name, in order to protect their family members, who are still in the region, from retaliation, their lawyers said.

One of the plaintiffs is described as a 32-year-old Yugoslav citizen who has been granted political asylum in the United States.

The lawsuit says that on March 27, Serbian policemen wearing blue uniforms and masks, along with members of the "White Tigers," the paramilitary unit headed by Arkan, burst into the family house in the city of Pec, and ordered everyone outside.

They separated the men from the women and then shot the plaintiff's 30-year old brother, 64-year-old uncle and 22-year-old cousin on the front lawn, the complaint says.

The plaintiff's parents, sister and sister-in-law were forced to watch, according to the complaint.

The second plaintiff is identified as a man, 47, who fled Yugoslavia in 1972 and was granted political asylum in the United States.

On the same day, in the same village, Serbian policemen and members of Arkan's paramilitary unit killed the second plaintiff's 79-year-old father, the lawsuit says.

The plaintiff's mother recognized one of the policemen as a neighbor, the lawsuit says and she, along with her other sons and a daughter-in-law were forced to flee to Albania. The family's home and motel, built near hot springs, were destroyed.

The defendants include the foreign minister, the minister of information, a former Yugoslav diplomat in Washington who is now spokesman for the foreign ministry, the chief of staff of the Yugoslav army and several military and police commanders.