NATO rejects Amnesty call for war crimes probe

NATO vehemently rejected on Friday a demand by Amnesty International that it be held accountable for the civilian deaths caused by the bombing of Serbia's state television building 10 years ago.

"The incident has been investigated thoroughly by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as part of the overall investigation into the 1999 air campaign," said Carmen Romero, an alliance spokeswoman.

"The main conclusion was that NATO has no case to answer," she said.

Sixteen civilians were killed and 16 others injured during the attack on April 23, 1999, on the headquarters and studios of Serbian TV in central Belgrade. The nighttime raid came at the height of the 78-day aerial bombing campaign against then-President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his crackdown on Kosovo Albanian separatists in the former Serbian province.

Amnesty International said in a statement issued on Thursday that the bombing was "a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime."

At the time, the prosecutor based in The Hague, the Netherlands, found that the bombing was "legally acceptable," since it was part of a planned attack aimed at disrupting and degrading the command, control and communications network in view of the dual use to which such communications systems were put.

The report said that although some mistakes were made by NATO, the prosecutor was satisfied there was no deliberate targeting of civilians.

Romero said that during the war the station's transmitters formed an integral part of the strategic communications network which enabled the Belgrade authorities to direct the repression taking place in Kosovo.

On that basis, she said, the war crimes prosecutor concluded that there was no basis into any of the allegations or into other incidents related to the NATO air campaign.

The 16 deaths triggered a public outcry in Serbia, both against NATO and against Dragoljub Milanovic, the TV director and a close Milosevic ally who ordered the station's workers not to leave their posts during the air raids. Milanovic was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the deaths.