War crimes prosecutors may have found a key "insider" to testify against the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic whose trial opens tonight in The Hague.
Unconfirmed reports from Belgrade suggest that a high-ranking former officer in the Serb police may give evidence to the United Nationstribunal, which is embarking on the biggest war crimes prosecution since the Nuremberg trials.
Milosevic is the first former head of state to be held to account for war crimes and faces a life sentence if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide for his role in the conflicts in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia.
The three hearings against him are expected to take up to two years. The prosecution alone could take as long as 18 months to outline its case.
In Belgrade, there is considerable pressure on potential witnesses not to give evidence to a tribunal which is seen as anti-Serb, and the prosecution has struggled to secure the witnesses it wants to help link Milosevic to specific crimes.
But it seems that Vlastimir Djordjevic, aged 53, a senior officer in the Serb police during Milosevic's rule, may be willing to testify in exchange for immunity.
Djordjevic resigned after the downfall of Milosevic in October 2000 and left Belgrade abruptly for Moscow last May.
In March 1999, as Nato air raids began, he attended a key meeting in Milosevic's office. That discussion was dedicated to the strategy of eliminating the footprints of Serb "ethnic cleansers" in Kosovo.
Last May, Serbian officials revealed the gruesome methods agreed at the meeting. Bodies of ethnic Albanians were dug up and transported by freezer trucks into Serbia proper. At least one truck was dumped in the Danube, hundreds of miles from Kosovo.
Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the UN Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, has not made public her list of witnesses, which the court has limited to 90 for the Kosovo trial. Under the tribunal's rules Milosevic has to be notified.
However, he refuses to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court and has not appointed a lawyer. Officials do not know whether he reads the hundreds of pages of documents from the prosecutor.
