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Speaking for the Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia, International Action Center Co-director Sara Flounders said Oct. 1 that organizations supporting her group's initiative are "already planning to hold hearings in eight countries and 25 cities."
The IAC's founder, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, will be the key speaker at some of these hearings. Clark prepared the "indictment" against the principal NATO heads of states and militaries responsible for the war and its consequences.
"The hearings follow the work we started on July 31-Aug. 1 here in New York, when 700 people attended the first hearing of the commission," said Flounders. "This initial hearing raised the charges against NATO and especially the U.S. government for instigating the war and committing other war crimes.
"We have now gathered a substantial amount of additional evidence to substantiate the charges, including admissions by NATO commanders that they purposely chose civilian targets in Serbia to bring pressure on Belgrade."
Flounders said that hearings scheduled for October in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, as well as Oslo, Norway, Paris and Berlin would gather more first-hand accounts of NATO war crimes. But she emphasized that the hearings "were not just to gather evidence, but to bring before an ever-greater public the truth about NATO's aggression against a small Balkan state.
"This truth has been hidden by the close collaboration between the corporate media and the government in each of the NATO countries."
She said meetings are set for Atlanta and Athens, Ga.; Milwaukee and Madison, Wis.; and New Paltz, N.Y., in October; Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich., and Washington in November, along with other U.S. cities. In Europe, groups are bringing charges against their own governments at hearings in Norway, Germany, Austria and Italy, among others.
"This is only the beginning," Flounders said. "We expect there to be other hearings not only in NATO countries but in other places such as Eastern Europe and Asia where there is concern about NATO aggression."
The commission plans to hold a culminating tribunal in New York in March 2000, she said. This is the anniversary of the bombing attack that opened the hot war against Yugoslavia.
"We will gather evidence from all these hearings worldwide and bring them before a tribunal here," Flounders said.
The Commission of Inquiry can be reached at
International Action Center,
39 West 14 Street, Room 206,
New York, NY 10011;
email: [email protected];
web site: http://www.iacenter.org;
phone: 212 633-6646;
fax: 212 633-2889.