Mr Slobodan Milosevic claimed that al-Qaeda militants had assisted Balkan rebels in their fight for independence from Serbia. The former Yugoslav president also asked a Kosovo Albanian witness testifying in his war crimes trial today if he had heard of Osama bin Laden.
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Mr Slobodan Milosevic. Photograph: Reuters
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Mr Milosevic made the allegations while cross-examining Mr Sabit Kadriu, a 41-year-old human rights worker who told the court yesterday how Serb forces murdered more than 100 civilians as they tried to flee Kosovo in 1999.
Mr Milosevic quoted from an alleged FBI report, dated December 18th 2001, which he said proved that al-Qaeda had established a terrorist network in Kosovo to help the Muslim population. He identified the report as a congressional statement from the intelligence service.
The authenticity of the document could not be independently confirmed and he gave no details on how he obtained it.
Mr Milosevic first asked Mr Kadriu if he knew anything about "mujahadeen atrocities" in Kosovo or if he had heard of bin Laden.
"That is a figment of your imagination," Mr Kadriu said, rejecting Mr Milosevic's claims.
The former Yugoslav leader, on trial for war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia during the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s, then read out from the document in English.
"Al-Qaeda supports Muslim fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo" among other regions, he read, referring to the death of civilians in the region. He said "the al-Qaeda branch of the KLA" was specialized in killing in Kosovo.
But the witness said: "The first I heard of al-Qaeda was after the crime in the United States."