Clark begins testimony in The Hague

Wesley Clark: Milosevic told me he would kill all Albanians

Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Wesley Clark, stated on Monday before the Specialist Chambers in The Hague that the Kosovo Liberation Army was a self-organized force.

In his testimony in the case where Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Clark emphasized that the KLA in 1998 consisted of local armed groups of Albanians, whose creation was prompted by increasing Serbian repression. 
"There wasn't much information, there wasn't much to talk about as far as the (KLA) command was concerned in the summer and fall of '98. As far as we knew, these were local groups that had formed more or less spontaneously in response to Serbian oppression over many, many years. Especially after the murder of the Jashari family, there was a growing sense of alarm that more negative developments were coming, and that's why people were increasingly forming these local groups," Clark said.

General Clark also said that special forces were deployed to observe the KLA from Albanian territory, but they were unable to provide reliable information. 

"I certainly got more information about the KLA from the Serbs than I did from our forces. The Serbs had points identified on the map that they identified as so-called 'terrorist points', meaning they were trying to gather information about it. Of course, the majority of the people in these groups were people who had their own homes and families and were trying to have their own lives, but on the other hand they were also trying to protect themselves and their families," Clark stated.   

In this case, the prosecution claims that the accused had effective control over the KLA, while the defense claims the opposite - that the zone and local commanders had real control of the situation on the ground.

When Clark was asked about his meetings with Thaçi, he said that he seemed like a person of authority when he saw him in Rambouillet. However, he stated that Thaçi was not a military commander.

"I met with Mr. Thaçi for the second time before the bombing campaign started, if I'm not mistaken. He was one of the people there, he was the most authoritative person, he was the youngest, he was the most convincing. So, he was the person who was dressed better, he had his hair in the most appropriate way. He lived in Switzerland, he spoke German, he didn't speak much English at that time. I didn't speak much German, so it was a little difficult for us to communicate with each other, but he was not a military commander," said General Clark.

He said he based this on conversations with Thaçi, as, according to him, he was unable to suggest targets of Serbian forces for NATO to bomb.

"We wanted to not attack civilian targets, but simply intervene with the military forces on the ground. And the question I asked him is where are they and where are you. So what should I attack, what are my targets? Meanwhile, the answer I got from him was nothing," Clark said. 
The general also mentioned conversations with Slobodan Milosevic. In one of them, Clark is  stated that Milosevic told him that he would do what Serbia had done in the past – kill all Albanians.

"He told me we know how to deal with these Albanians, these murderers. We've done this before, it's not the first time. I asked him, 'How did you deal with them? What did you do?' He replied, 'We killed them all,'" Clark said. 
Witness Wesley Clark also said that he had never heard of the KLA General Staff. Asked by the prosecution about several incidents that are part of the indictment, Clark replied that he had never heard of them.

The former Supreme Commander of NATO Allied Forces Europe, during his testimony, also spoke about a conversation with the then president of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, who, after the massacre of the Jashari family in March 98, called him on the phone and told him that "from now on, Albanians in Kosovo will rise up in armed resistance."

Wesley Clark's testimony is expected to continue in the coming days.
Former President Hashim Thaçi, former Speakers of Parliament Kadri Veseli and Jakup Krasniqi, and former Chief of the Vetëvendosje MPs, Rexhep Selimi, are accused of joint criminal enterprise in connection with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Based on the indictment of the ZPS published in February 2023, Thaçi, Veseli, Krasniqi and Selimi are accused of joint criminal enterprise in connection with about 100 murders, then for torture and cruel treatment in about 40 detention centers during the period 1998-1999.

The SPO alleges that it committed joint criminal enterprises related to six counts of war crimes, including: Persecution (Count 1), imprisonment (Count 2), other inhumane acts (Count 4), torture (Count 6), unlawful killing (Count 8), enforced disappearance (Count 10) as well as four counts of crimes against humanity, including unlawful or arbitrary arrest and detention (Count 3), cruel treatment (Count 5), torture (Count 7) and unlawful killing (Count 9). 

Most of the victims of the crimes, according to the ZPS, are Albanians, civilians and members of the Democratic League of Kosovo. According to the ZPS, the accused were aware or should have been aware due to their leading positions in the General Staff, regarding the allegations of the crimes that were committed and that they intended to seize power in Kosovo through them. 

Former leaders of the KLA General Staff have denied all these accusations. They have said that the KLA did not have such a hierarchy, since the area commanders had the weight and that their goal was to fight Serbia, not civilians.

Clark on Selim and Veseli: I don't know about their role, I've seen their names before

General Wesley Clark, during his testimony in The Hague on Monday, was asked about the role of Rexhep Selim and Kadri Veseli. He said he knew nothing about their role, but that he had seen their names before.

"No, but I've seen their names before," Clark said, reports "Oath for Justice."

In addition, Clark was also asked about the names of Azem Syla and Sokol Bashota, but the witness said he had no knowledge of either of them.

The witness indicated that he met with Thaçi's defense three times for this interview and that he does not know specifically what crimes the KLA four are accused of.

The witness, speaking about the incident where they had hit a building, thinking it was a Serbian forces base, indicated that they had killed about 80 innocent civilians.

“Later it was understood that it was a collection point run by the Serbian Army or perhaps the MUP where they were putting Albanian civilians inside that building. The building was surrounded by Serbian vehicles and there were antennas from the building and vice versa. We were told that it was a headquarters of Serbian institutions and we targeted it. I believe we killed about 80 innocent civilians,” said Clark.

Clark stressed that this happened because of the wrong information they had received.

Wesley Clark will continue his testimony tomorrow.

Wesley Clark on the Recak massacre: There was a risk that Milosevic would blame the KLA

Speaking about disinformation during the war, General Wesley Clark said that the internationals did not want Slobodan Milosevic's people to conduct investigations into the Recak Massacre.

Clark said that the reason for this was because there was a risk that Milosevic could tamper with the evidence and make it appear as if the event was carried out by the KLA.

The witness claimed that at the time, the international community wanted the case to be investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

"The reason the internationals did not want Milosevic's people to investigate what happened in Recak was that there was a risk that the evidence could be tampered with and a situation would arise where it would be claimed that the event was caused by the KLA," lawyer Aiden Ellis, who represents Jakup Krasniqi, initially read the witness statement.

Meanwhile, the witness confirmed this, saying that Milosevic had done this before.

"The main idea was for Milosevic to stop disinformation as he had done before and try to manipulate the situation," the witness said.

Clark said that during the war he had repeatedly given interviews and made statements praising the KLA as a well-organized force. But Clark said that was not the case. He said that his intended audience was Slobodan Milosevic because he knew he was listening.

"The intended audience of my comments was Milosevic. I knew he was listening and I wanted to project this kind of force onto Milosevic so that he would be quick to surrender," Clark said, adding that his statements were not NATO assessments of the KLA's capabilities.

The witness said that it is normal to use political statements in a conflict situation./Oath for Justice

Clark: Thaçi had no control over people who may have committed crimes

Regarding the statement that the mistakes of others cannot be attributed to Hashim Thaçi, General Wesley Clark said that he made this claim because he does not think he had control over people who committed acts of violence.

He also said it is not clear whether the violence was carried out by the KLA. But even if it was, according to Clark, it was carried out by specific individuals.

"I don't think Mr. Thaçi had control over the people who committed such acts. First, it is not clear that the violence was committed by the KLA. Even if it was, it was carried out by specific individuals," Clark stated.

Clark emphasized that even if the KLA was involved in this violence, no one had a control mechanism over what was happening on the ground.

"I've spoken to Mike Jackson about this and of course he's spoken to their commanders and they've been in contact with KLA people who were connected to certain areas of responsibility. I don't believe it was the KLA. But even if it was the KLA, no one had a control mechanism over what was happening on the ground. It doesn't work like this where you give an order and then expect people to carry out that order," he said.

Clark added that people were resisting because they wanted to save their lives.

Wesley Clark recounted an incident in which NATO pilots attacked a line of tractors in Drenica after seeing people burning property. According to him, the pilots thought they were Serbian forces attacking Albanians.

“Somewhere around mid-April, our pilots were flying over Kosovo and they saw a line of tractors near Drenica that were full of people. So the planes were very far away and they were looking through binoculars and they saw tractors with people stopping at some houses and setting fire to these houses and we started to wonder what was going on. This pilot started attacking the tractors because he thought these were Serbs attacking Albanians. So the plane hit the tractors. The next day, Milosevic asked the international press to look at the scene and they realized that these were ordinary people who were killed by our air force,” Clark said.

Clark said he conducted an investigation and that the pilots were hurt after being confronted with the facts.

"We conducted an investigation, the pilots were very hurt when they were confronted with the facts," he said.

In addition, he said that he had met someone at the airport a few years ago who had told him that he had been on one of those tractors. He had even told Clark that they burned their property to keep it from being handed over to the Serbs.

"And many years later people meet me, Albanians stop me on the street and want to talk to me. Two or three years ago, I met someone at the airport who told me that I was on one of those tractors and I said 'were you on the tractor in Drenica when the A10 was attacked?' He said 'yes'. I asked him why you were setting the houses on fire and he said we were setting the houses on fire because we knew the Serbs were coming to take them and we preferred to burn them ourselves rather than leave them to the Serbs. This shows how strong the feelings were, how angry, how furious and how scared they were. You have to understand what the situation was like and what the people on the ground in Kosovo felt. Scared but also determined. Willing to burn their properties and not leave them in the hands of the Serbs," said Clark.

With that, Thaçi's defense ended the questions and then continued with that of Kadri Veseli, represented by lawyer Rodney Dixon./Oath for Justice

Clark tells of the disagreements between the Americans and the French over the north

Former NATO commander for Europe, General Wesley Clark, during his testimony in The Hague, spoke about the differences between the Americans and the French regarding northern Kosovo. 

Clark said he had gone to meet with the French Foreign Minister at the time and the Minister of Defense to discuss the issue. 

"I complained because it was an organized effort by the Serbs to clear the area north of the Ibar River. I met Minister Alain Richard who told me, 'no, we have ordered French troops to protect the Serbs in that area, to support them.' We have had some difficulties with that. But that is the way NATO troops operate. There is a kind of authority and power that belongs to the national authorities themselves, even though they are under the control of the NATO command," Clark said. 

He says that he had called on the French Minister Richard to change the orders, but he did not change the orders. 

"Later I sent more reinforcements there, to preserve the possibility that Albanians could live there. The report I was getting showed that Albanian doctors in hospitals and other people were being forced to leave and expelled from there. I thought and realized that it was Serbian paramilitaries and Serbian special forces who were doing this. This is the way Belgrade operated," Clark said. 

Clark is testifying in The Hague, as a witness called by the defense of former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi.

He is the last defense witness. 

Clark: Milosevic told me he knows how to treat Albanians - "We killed them all"

During his testimony, American General Wesley Clark mentioned conversations with the "butcher of the Balkans", Slobodan Milosevic, once, as Clark put it, the president of Yugoslavia.

As he has shown, Milosevic told him that what he does in Kosovo is his internal matter.

Meanwhile, on another occasion, Milosevic told him that they knew what to do with Albanians and that it was not the first time they had dealt with them. Clark said that Milosevic told him that they would do what they had done in the past – kill them all.

"He told me we know how to deal with these Albanians, these murderers. We've done this before, it's not the first time. I asked him: 'How did you deal with them? What did you do?' He replied: 'We killed them all,'" Clark said on Monday in The Hague.

The former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe also mentioned a conversation with the President of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, who, after the massacre of the Jashari family, called him and told him that from that moment on, Albanians in Kosovo would rise up in armed resistance.

Clark: Thaçi was not a military commander, he had no information about the situation on the ground

American General Wesley Clark, invited as the last defense witness for former President Hashim Thaçi in the trial in The Hague, has stated that Thaçi was not a military commander.

During his testimony on Monday in The Hague, Clark emphasized that in the first meetings with Thaçi there were communication problems due to language, while in the third meeting he asked for help from him to know where to intervene, but he did not receive it because Thaçi did not know what was happening.

“I met with Mr. Thaçi for the second time before the bombing campaign started if I’m not mistaken. He was one of the people there, he was the most authoritative person, he was the youngest, he was the most convincing. So, he was the person who was dressed better, had his hair in the most appropriate way. He lived in Switzerland, he spoke German, he didn’t speak much English at that time. I didn’t speak much German anyway so it was a little difficult for us to communicate with each other, but he wasn’t the military commander. When I met with him the third time I asked for help, but they didn’t get help because he had no idea what was going on. And I said to him, what’s going on because the problem I had as a commander was that we didn’t have a force on the ground so we were just relying on the air campaign. We wanted to not attack civilian targets, but just interfere with the military forces on the ground. And the question I asked him is where are they and where are you. So what should I attack, which ones? "What are my objectives? Meanwhile, the answer I got from him was nothing," Clark said.

According to the American commander, in the summer and fall of 1998 the Kosovo Liberation Army did not function with a clear command structure, but consisted mainly of local groups spontaneously organized to withstand the ongoing Serbian oppression.

"There wasn't much information, there wasn't much to talk about as far as the (KLA) command in the summer and fall of '98 is concerned. As far as we knew, it was about local groups that had formed more or less spontaneously in response to Serbian oppression for many, many years," he said.

According to him, a decisive moment that significantly increased the mobilization of the Albanian population was the murder of the Jashari family. 

"Particularly after the murder of the Jashari family, there was a growing general alarm that there would be more negative developments, and for this reason people were increasingly forming these local groups," Clark stressed.

He added that he had received more information about the KLA from Serbian sources than from American ones. 

“The Serbs had points identified on the map that they called 'terrorist points'; so, they were trying to gather information about them,” said the former NATO commander. 

However, Clark emphasized that the majority of the people who made up these groups were local residents who, in addition to trying to continue their daily lives, aimed to protect themselves and their families from systemic violence.

During his testimony, General Clark mentioned conversations with Milosevic. Once, as Clark said, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic told him that what he did in Kosovo was his internal matter. 

Meanwhile, on another occasion, Milosevic told him that they knew what to do with the Albanians and that it was not the first time they had dealt with them. Clark said that Milosevic told him that they would do what they had done in the past – kill them all. The former Supreme Commander of NATO Allied Forces in Europe also mentioned a conversation with the President of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, who after the massacre of the Jashari family called him and told him that from that moment on, the Albanians in Kosovo would rise up in armed resistance.

Mishetić: Clark will show that Thaçi was a political figure without military responsibility

Former President Hashim Thaçi's defense attorney, lawyer Luka Misetic, has warned that former General Wesley Clark's testimony will show that Thaçi was a political figure without military responsibility.

As Misetic said, Clark will also testify about meetings with Thaci, including those in Rambouillet.

Clark is the last witness called by the defense in the Special Case against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selim and Jakup Krasniqi.