 |
| Belgrade in flames, March 1999. |
According to Sputnik International, Serbia
has launched a team of lawyers tasked with the preparation of a
lawsuit against the imperialist alliance of NATO over the damage it caused to the country
during the 1999 bombing.
The team will include the best lawyers from
Serbia, as well as from the EU, Russia, China and India and will be
headed by prominent Serbian lawyer Srdjan Aleksic. "We
want to bring to trial the NATO states that participated in the
aggression against Yugoslavia. These are 20 states that directly or
indirectly participated in it. The lawsuits will target directly each
of these states," Aleksic told Sputnik Serbia.
According
to Aleksic, the lawyers do not plan to apply to the International
Court of Justice. Instead, the lawsuits will be filed with the
national courts of each of the 20 states.
"We
believe that this is within the competence of national courts. These
states violated the principles set forth in the seventh chapter of
the UN Charter, which prohibits aggression against any state. In
addition, NATO has violated chapters 5 and 6 of its own charter,
since NATO is a defensive alliance, and not an offensive one. This is
about a violation of international law, in particular conventions,
which prohibit aggression and the use of force against sovereign
states," the lawyer explained.
Members
of Aleksic's team are expected to prepare about 20 cases supported by
convincing material evidence, like medical documents that indicate a
connection between the use of depleted uranium munitions during the
bombing and the increase in the number of oncological diseases in
Serbia over the last two decades.
"They
dropped from 10 to 15 tons of depleted uranium on the territory of
the former Yugoslavia. The increase in the number of cancer patients
has caused serious concerns. Malignant tumors are found annually in
33,000 Serbian citizens. Every day this terrible disease is diagnosed
at least in one child in our country. Compared with 1999, the number
of cancer patients has increased by five times, primarily in the
south of Serbia, as well as Kosovo and Metohija," Aleksic said.
According
to the lawyer, outstanding Serbian doctors, oncologists and
toxicologists will participate in the preparation of the lawsuit.
"All
our statements are evidenced by the fact that 45 Italian soldiers who
served in those areas of Kosovo which were affected by the bombing
with depleted uranium eventually got cancer. The court acknowledged
the fact that the responsibility for the incident must be borne by
the State of Italy, and now it pays serious compensation, from
200,000 to 1,200,000 euros to each person diagnosed with the disease.
Our lawsuit will be based on that," the lawyer said.
In
an interview with Radio Sputnik, Vice President of the International
Association of Russian-Speaking Lawyers, Mikhail Ioffe, said that
Serbia should have filed the lawsuits immediately after the 1999
bombings.
"From
a legal standpoint, they should have brought the charges when the
damage [caused by the airstrikes] was there for everyone to see, not
now that its traces are no longer evident. Still, the damage they
caused to the people’s health is hard to miss,” Ioffe said.
He
described the idea of suing NATO for the 1999 airstrikes as “viable.” Mikhail
Ioffe also mentioned a number of legal problems that would prove hard
to resolve.
“The
question is whether the US will respond to these charges or not. The
other countries could likewise want to shirk responsibility for what
they did. The biggest hurdle is that [the 1999 bombings] have not
been recognized as an international aggression by any authoritative
international body,” the lawyer stated.
“The
UN refused to authorize them, neither did they term the actions by
the US and its coalition partners as an act of aggression. I guess
this could be a matter for some backdoor diplomatic bargaining Serbia
could benefit from,” Mikhail Ioffe concluded.
The
1999 bombing killed hundreds of civilians, and destroyed the
country's infrastructure including bridges, industrial plants and
public buildings.