Kandic told the newspaper Danas that Filipovic was charged because he was the "first person to raise the issue of the responsibility of the Army, the Serbian forces" in Kosovo.

The timing of Belgrade's attacks against Kandic and Filipovic is no coincidence. Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has mounted repression against his critics in the run-up to elections he has called for September 24. Serbian police have arrested more than 1,200 opposition supporters, journalists and members of the student group Otpor in the past four months. Earlier this summer, police took over Belgrade's only independent television station, Studio B, and declared Otpor a terrorist organization. Shortly thereafter Serbian police interrogated the leaders of an anti-war feminist group, Women in Black, and arrested and tortured one member, Bojan Aleksov, who was helping Serbian conscientious objectors flee conscription. Aleksov escaped to Germany, where his case has been taken up by Amnesty International.

In August, Serbian police raided the offices of a Belgrade cultural center called the Center for Cultural Decontamination, seizing the group's computers and office equipment. Financial police have also been busy raiding Serbia's non-governmental organizations. And last week, Milosevic's political godfather turned dissident, former Serbian president Ivan Stambolic, went missing while on a morning jog and has not been heard from since. He is widely believed to have been kidnapped by Milosevic's state security organization.

But even in this atmosphere of selective but growing repression, the cases against Kandic and Filipovic seem unique, as they reveal an effort by the Milosevic regime to silence specifically those who say the Yugoslav army committed war crimes in Kosovo. Those allegations are universally denied by Serbian state-controlled media, which instead portray Serbs as the exclusive victims of the international community, the NATO bombing and ethnic Albanian terrorists in Kosovo.

Bogdan Ivanisevic, a Serbia researcher with Human Rights Watch, says the regime's attacks against Filipovic and Kandic seem targeted for domestic political consumption in the run-up to elections.

"The simple answer is that this has to do with elections," Ivanisevic said in a telephone interview from New York. "Since the end of the war in Kosovo, the intensification of regime repression has been gradual. First, the regime accused people like Kandic of simple lack of patriotism. But recently, the accusations have become more drastic. The regime is accusing Kandic and the student group Otpor of espionage, even terrorism. And needless to say, all of these accusations are blatantly false and absurd."

The reason Milosevic is stepping up attacks against his critics may be a familiar one: to paint himself as the sole protector of Serbian interests, defending the nation against an international community that has unfairly accused Serbs of war crimes. (Indeed, a U.N. tribunal last year indicted Milosevic and four top deputies of war crimes in Kosovo).

Critics such as Filipovic and Kandic give credence to what many Serbs suspect, but don't see on Serb television -- that Milosevic's wartime policies have led to Serbia's international isolation, sanctions, and poverty. If the public heard allegations of war crimes not from the international community, but from fellow Serbs, they might be inclined to vote for someone else.

Last week Human Rights Watch called on the Yugoslav army to investigate allegations its troops commit atrocities in Kosovo, offering "to provide any genuine investigative body with its overwhelming evidence of war crimes in Kosovo." For her part, Kandic too has said she is willing to turn over evidence her group has collected of Yugoslav army crimes in Kosovo.

Yugoslav army spokesman Radisic declined the offer. "A person who puts forth such allegations might be a psychiatric case."

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