THE HAGUE, Feb 14: Armed with a stack of notes, videotapes and grisly photographs, Slobodan Milosevic went on the offensive on Thursday, waving an accusatory finger at the judges hearing his epic war crimes trial.

In his hours-long defence before the UN tribunal, an unrepentant Milosevic repeated many of the arguments he has already made to counter charges that he was behind the atrocities of the Balkans wars.

The former Yugoslav president ridiculed his accusers as simple-minded and dismissed their case as an “ocean of lies” fabricated by the West to justify the 1999 NATO war against Yugoslavia.

“You basically have nothing and that is why you have to concoct things, invent things,” Milosevic said, wearing his trademark tie in the red-white-and-blue national colours of Serbia.

“This show that is supposed to be a trial is a crime against a sovereign state, against me,” he charged.

After presenting a controversial hour-long German television documentary on Kosovo, Milosevic began his defence looking somewhat agitated, as if eager to speak after seven months in detention.

He grew more defiant as his speech continued, pointing his finger at the three judges to underscore his words as he sat in the accused’s chair, flanked by two UN guards.

The white-haired Milosevic attacked the trial as unfair and complained to the prosecutors that “everything is at your disposal” while he only had a “public telephone booth in the prison.”

“It is the only thing I have available in order to face here the most terrible kind of libel against me, my country, my people,” he argued.

Presiding judge Richard May listened to Milosevic’s statement, taking notes, and there was none of the verbal sparring that had marked his previous appearances before the British judge.

May cut off his microphone only once, announcing a 20-minute break to allow the interpreters who struggled to keep up with Milosevic time for respite.

Milosevic returned to the floor to launch a full offensive on NATO and the West for its 1999 war on Yugoslavia, which he termed the “greatest aggression in the world after World War II.”

He showed 14 graphic photographs of ethnic Albanians who were killed when NATO war planes bombed a refugee column leaving the town of Djakovica in April 1999.

When a blood-spattered head was shown in full horror on the screen, Milosevic asked: “Do I need to show more?”.

He offered a dizzying list of statistics to prove that it was NATO, and not Serb forces under his command, that perpetrated atrocities in Kosovo, asserting that “130,000 pregnant women” were put at risk during the 11-week campaign.—AFP