Slobodan Milošević listen (help·info) (Serbian: Слободан Милошевић, pronounced [sloˈbodan miˈloʃevitɕ]); (20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006) was President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia. He served as President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and then President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. He also led Serbia's Socialist Party from its foundation in 1992 to 2001.
He was one of the key figures in the Yugoslav wars during the 1990s and Kosovo War in 1999. He was indicted in May 1999, during the Kosovo war, by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity in Kosovo, charges of genocide in Bosnia, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Violations of the laws or customs of war in Bosnia and Croatia were added a year and a half after that.
He was forced to resign following a popular uprising against his rule. A year later Milošević was extradited to stand trial in the The Hague but died after five years in prison with just fifty hours of testimony left before the conclusion of the trial. Milošević, who suffered from chronic heart ailments, high blood pressure and diabetes, died of a heart attack[1], according to autopsies.
Early career
Milošević was a Montenegrin Serb by origin, born in Požarevac, Serbia, during the Axis occupation. His parents separated soon after he was born; his father, Svetozar Milošević, a deacon in the Serbian Orthodox Church committed suicide in 1962, and his mother, Stanislava Milošević, a school teacher, hanged herself in 1974.
He went on to study law at Belgrade University, where he became the head of the ideology committee of the Communist Party's student branch. While at the university, he befriended Ivan Stambolić, whose uncle had been a prime minister of Serbia. This was to prove a crucial connection for Milošević's career prospects, as Stambolić sponsored his rise through the Communist hierarchy.
On leaving university, Milošević became an economic advisor to the Mayor of Belgrade in 1960. Five years later he married Mirjana Marković, whom he had known since childhood. Markovic would have some influence on her husband's political career both before and after his rise to power; she was also leader of Milošević's junior coalition partner, Yugoslav United Left in the 1990s. In 1968 he got a job at the Tehnogas company, where Stambolić was working, and became its chairman in 1973. By 1978 Stambolić's sponsorship had enabled Milošević to become the head of Beobanka, one of Yugoslavia's largest banks; his frequent trips to Paris and New York gave him the opportunity to learn English and French, both of which were to be considerable assets in his political career.
Rise to power
Milošević was elected president of the Belgrade City Committee of the League of Communists in April 1984, again replacing Stambolić, who had moved on to the post of head of the Serbian Communist Party. At this time Milošević publicly opposed nationalism; he prevented the publication of a book containing the works of Slobodan Jovanović, a distinguished Serbian historian, law professor and nationalist politician of the early twentieth century. Milošević also advocated retaining Marxism as a school subject and publicly lambasted Belgrade's youth for their low turnout at the Communist Day of the Youth, claiming that their absence "desecrated" Tito's character and work.
Milošević emerged in April 1987 as the leading force in Serbian politics. His political positions have sometimes been termed as nationalist (though there is no indication of that in quotes or acts from Milošević in those years), although socialism and internationalism also marked his ideology. Later that year, while addressing a Serbian crowd in Kosovo gathered to protest about alleged brutality by local police, he told them that "No one has the right to beat you! No one will ever beat you again!".
This broke two important taboos in Yugoslav politics; that Communist officials should not publicly criticise their peers (the police were controlled by the local Communist administration) and that Party officials should not publicly side with one of Yugoslavia's ethnic groups (the local administration was dominated by ethnic Albanians, which the Kosovo Serbs resented). Stambolić later said that "he had seen that day as the end of Yugoslavia".
At the same time, Milošević's message was in accordance with internationalism cornerstone principle of the Communist's party, which tells that no ethnic group has any prevalence over another. With the statement, Milošević tried to insure this policy with the message that Albanians of Kosovo can not use police to oppress and abuse local Serbs.
Meanwhile, Stambolić had become the President of Serbia. To the dismay of senior figures in the party, he supported Milošević for election as the new party leader. Stambolić spent three days advocating Milošević as leader, managing to secure him a narrow victory, by the narrowest margin in the history of Serbian Communist Party internal elections.
Dragiša Pavlović, a Stambolić ally and Milošević's fairly liberal successor at the head of the Belgrade Committee of the party, opposed Milošević's policies towards Kosovan Serbs. Contrary to advice from Stambolić, Milošević denounced Pavlović as being soft on Albanian radicals. Milošević had prepared the ground by quietly replacing Stambolić's supporters with his own people; on 23 September and 24 September, during a thirty-hour session of the Communist Central Committee broadcast live on state television, Milošević had Pavlović deposed. Embarrassed and under pressure from Milošević's supporters, Stambolić resigned a few days later.
In February 1988, Stambolić's resignation was formalized, allowing Milošević to take his place as President. Twelve years later, in the summer of 2000, Stambolić was kidnapped; his body was found in 2003 and Milošević was charged with ordering his murder. In 2005, several members of the Serbian secret police and criminal gangs were convicted in Belgrade for a number of murders, including Stambolić's. However, in specifics, Serbian secret police had nothing to do with the murder of Stambolić, it was the act of criminal gangs.
Milošević spent most of 1988/1989 focusing his politics on the "Kosovo problem". His subordinates organized public demonstrations – the so-called "anti-bureaucratic revolution" – which led to the elected leaderships of Vojvodina (6 October 1988), Montenegro (10 January 1989) and finally Kosovo itself (in February-March 1989) being removed. Azem Vllasi, leader of the Kosovo Albanian majority, was arrested and a strike by Kosovar miners was violently crushed by the Serbian police, killing 32 people.
On 28 March 1989, the National Assembly of Serbia, under Milošević's leadership, amended the Serbian constitution to greatly reduce the autonomy of its two provinces. The decision was hugely controversial, especially in Kosovo, where many Albanians had never accepted the legitimacy of Serbia's annexation of the province in 1912. A harsh regime was imposed which attracted widespread criticism from international human rights organisations, transnational bodies such as the European Community and other foreign governments. This caused great alarm in the other republics of Yugoslavia, where concerns were expressed that their own autonomous status could come under threat.
As nationalism grew within Yugoslavia, Milošević sought major constitutional changes. The 1974 Yugoslav Constitution had organised the country so that Serbia's status as the largest and most populous republic was counterbalanced by the way that the other republics were represented. The socialist Yugoslavia was at the time governed by an eight-member Presidency, representing the six republics plus Kosovo and Vojvodina. By ousting the government of Montenegro and replacing it with a more compliant one, Milošević effectively secured that republic's vote for himself; likewise the abolition of the autonomous governments of Vojvodina and Kosovo ensured that he controlled those votes as well. The Presidency was thus divided down the middle between Milošević's supporters and his opponents in the other republics, with four votes for each side. The result was stalemate and an increasing paralysis of Yugoslavia's federal government.
At the 14th Congress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in January 1990, Milošević's Serbian delegation campaigned for major constitutional changes which would give greater political power too. Slovenian and Croatian delegations (led by Milan Kučan and Ivica Račan respectively) strongly opposed this, seeing it as an attack on their own republics' status, and left the Congress in protest. This caused a deep rift in the League of Communists and effectively put an end to the Party as a unified organisation.
With the collapse of the Yugoslav League of Communists, Milošević presided over the Serbian party's transformation into the Socialist Party of Serbia (July 1990) and the adoption of a new Serbian constitution (September 1990) providing for the direct election of a president with increased powers. Milošević was subsequently re-elected president of the Serbian Republic in the direct elections of December 1990 and December 1992.
In the first free parliamentary elections of December 1990, Milošević's Socialist Party won 80.5% of the vote. The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo largely boycotted the election, effectively eliminating even what little opposition Milošević had. Milošević himself won the presidential election with an even higher percentage of the vote. Although the elections could not have been described as wholly free and fair – Milošević controlled much of the media as well as the election system itself – there is little doubt that at this time he genuinely enjoyed mass popular support in Serbia.
Milošević's rise to power happened amidst a growth of nationalism in all the former Yugoslavian republics following the collapse of communist governments throughout eastern Europe. In 1990, Slovenians elected a nationalist government under Milan Kučan, and the Croatians did the same with Franjo Tuđman. Communist single-party rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina was replaced by an unstable coalition of three ethnically-based parties.
The Yugoslav Wars
Yugoslavia's collapse became inevitable by the start of 1991, with the federal institutions completely deadlocked between pro- and anti-Milošević forces. In a televised address on 16 March 1991 Milošević declared that Yugoslavia was finished and that Serbia would no longer be bound by decisions of the Federal Presidency.[2]
In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia seceded from the federation, followed by the republics of Macedonia (September 1991) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (March 1992). The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) sought unsuccessfully to prevent Slovenia's secession by the use of force; however, Slovenia's Ten-Day War ended in a disastrous defeat for the federal forces. At this point, Milošević adopted a policy of establishing "all Serbs in one state," based on the ostensible premise that the large Serbian populations in Croatia (580,000) and Bosnia (1.36 million) should have the right to stay in Yugoslavia as they desired, arguing that the Yugoslav Constitution gave the right of self-determination to nations (Serbs, Croats, etc as a whole), not republics (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, etc).
This policy – characterised by critics as a "Greater Serbia" in all but name – was, however, certain to produce a violent conflict. The Serb minorities lived, for the most part, in ethnically mixed areas with large non-Serb populations in their midst. Their areas were also not contiguous with Serbia itself.
Croatia's Serbs began campaigning for autonomy or independence from Croatia as early as mid-1990 after the election of the Croatian nationalist Franjo Tudjman, with Milošević's full support. Through 1991 and early 1992, together with the Yugoslav People's Army, they engaged in a war against the Croatian government. The first leader of Serbs in Croatia, Milan Babić, has stated that Milošević was responsible for this and his successor Goran Hadžić publicly bragged about how he was "the extended hand of Slobodan Milošević".
War crimes prosecutors subsequently characterised the creation of the separatist Republic of Serbian Krajina as a "joint criminal enterprise" whose goal was "the forcible removal of the majority of the Croat and other non-Serb population from the approximately one-third of the territory of the Republic of Croatia that he planned to become part of a new Serb-dominated state."[2] At the trial of Milan Babić, the ICTY found that the Serbian government was directly involved in the Croatian Serb rebellion, providing supplies, weapons, money and leadership.
In 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina was plunged into war even before its formal declaration of independence. Bosnian Serb forces soon captured as much as 70% of the country, expelling hundreds of thousands of non-Serbs and killing many thousands more, often in atrocities such as the Srebrenica massacre. Again, war crimes prosecutors have characterised this as a "joint criminal enterprise" in which Milošević played a leading part.[3] The ICTY likewise found that the Serbian government was directly involved in the conflict.
By 1995, however, the ongoing wars in Croatia and Bosnia had become an unsupportable burden for Serbia. The country had experienced hyperinflation and a drastic worsening of living standards, due to an economic collapse and the effect of international sanctions. Milošević sought to force the Croatian and Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table but was rebuffed by their nationalist leaderships. In response, despite his earlier support for their rebellions, he let it be known that they were on their own.
The Croatian War was brought to an end in August 1995 when Croatia's Operation Storm rapidly overran the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Almost the entire Croatian Serb population was expelled from Croatia in the process, fleeing into Bosnia and Serbia. Only a month later, the Bosnian Serbs were brought to the brink of military collapse by a combination of NATO air strikes (Operation Deliberate Force) and a joint Croatian/Bosniak ground offensive (Operation Mistral). Again, many hundreds of thousands of Serbs were forced into exile.
Milošević subsequently negotiated the Dayton Agreement in the name of the Bosnian Serbs, ending the conflict. As the agreement finally brought an end to the war in Bosnia, Milošević was credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan peace. But crucially, the Dayton Agreement did not grant amnesty for the war crimes committed during the conflict – an omission on Milošević's part that was to pave the way for his eventual prosecution.
Milošević was limited to two terms as President of Serbia, but at the end of his term of office he instead stood for the hitherto relatively unimportant post of President of Yugoslavia (which by this time consisted of only Serbia and Montenegro). He won easily and assumed office on 23 July 1997. His old post passed into the hands of Milan Milutinović, a political ally. In Montenegro, however, the pro-Milošević old guard was pushed aside by the ambitious Milo Đukanović, who became President of Montenegro and emerged as an increasingly bitter opponent of Milošević.
That same year, an armed rebellion broke out in Kosovo against Serbian rule. The separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) began to launch attacks against Serbian and Yugoslav security forces as well as Serbian officials and those Albanians, Serbs and others whom the KLA regarded as "collaborators". Although the Serbian response was initially fairly restrained, by 1998 hundreds had died in escalating retaliations and 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were reported to have been made homeless.
The conflict culminated in the Kosovo War of 1999, during which over half of the province's Albanian population fled and several thousand people died. A NATO campaign of air strikes (Operation Allied Force) eventually forced Milošević to back down. The subsequent Kumanovo Agreement saw Kosovo being handed over to a United Nations protectorate along with the total withdrawal of Yugoslav forces. In the aftermath of the war, the majority of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population fled into Serbia proper, fearing or experiencing persecution by vengeful Albanians and adding to the country's already large refugee population.
This time, though, Milošević was not lionised as a peacemaker. On 27 May 1999, he was indicted by the ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Kosovo. The possibility of his standing trial seemed remote at this point; despite the loss of Kosovo, he still appeared to retain popular support.
Downfall of presidency
Milošević poster defaced with mud
On 4 February 1997, Milošević recognized the opposition victories in some local elections, having contested the results for 11 weeks.
Constitutionally limited to two terms as Serbian president, on 23 July 1997, Milošević assumed the presidency of the Yugoslav Federation (currently Serbia and Montenegro).
Armed actions by Albanian separatist groups and Serbian police and military counter-action in Serbia's previously autonomous (and 90% Albanian) province of Kosovo culminated in escalating warfare in 1998, NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between March and June 1999, and finally a full withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from the province.
During the Kosovo War he was indicted on 27 May 1999, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Kosovo, and he was standing trial, up until his death, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which he asserted was illegal, having been established in contravention of the UN-charter.
The Yugoslav constitution called for a second election round with all but the two leading candidates eliminated, in the event that no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. Official results put Koštunica ahead of Milošević but at under 50%. Opinion polls suggested that supporters of most of the minor candidates would go to Milošević as would numbers of people who abstained in the first round but would oppose an opposition supported by the NATO powers.
Milošević's rejection of claims of a first-round opposition victory in new elections for the Federal presidency in September 2000 led to mass demonstrations in Belgrade on 5 October and the collapse of the regime's authority. Opposition-list leader Vojislav Koštunica finally took office as Yugoslav president on 6 October when Milošević publicly accepted defeat.
Some say he was forced to accept this reality when commanders of the army whom he had expected to support him had indicated that in this instance they would not. Ironically, Milošević lost his grip on power by losing in elections which he scheduled prematurely (before the end of his mandate) and which he did not even need to win in order to retain power which was centred in the parliaments which his party and its associates controlled. This downfall is known as the Bulldozer Revolution.
Following a warrant for his arrest by the Yugoslav authorities on charges of corruption and abuse of power, Milošević was forced to surrender to security forces on Saturday, 31 March 2001 following an armed stand off at his fortified villa in Belgrade. On 28 June of the same year, Milošević was transferred by Yugoslav government officials from the gaol in Belgrade where he was being held to United Nations custody just inside Bosnian territory. He was then transported to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Constitution explicitly prohibited extradition of Yugoslav citizens and President Koštunica formally opposed the transfer which has been ordered by Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić.
Trial
Slobodan Milošević defending himself in the Hague
Following Milošević's transfer, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. On 30 January 2002, Milošević accused the war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. The trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002, with Milošević defending himself while refusing to recognize the legality of the court's jurisdiction.
His popularity among the Serbs and Yugoslavs again rose sharply once the trial had begun, as his supporters see it as a travesty of justice and violation of national sovereignty. In addition, the rules of procedure and the Statute of the ICTY are widely considered among legal experts as less-than-democratic by standards of modern (U.S.) jurisprudence (i.e. admission of hearsay as evidence, ex-post facto changes to rules of procedure, etc.)
Milošević had a team in Belgrade that helped him, often sending him information available from the secret police files. Serbian insiders often supported Milošević's point of view, while Bosnian and Croatian witnesses have offered much testimony supporting the indictments.
The tribunal had to prove that Milosevic had command responsibility in Croatia and Bosnia, at least de facto, since formally as a President of Serbia at the time he was not in charge. His influence may have gone beyond his formal duties, but there is little to no evidence to support the prosecutor's case.
Milošević was not considered by some contemporaries to be a radical nationalist himself (although some of his followers were). Milošević's rhetoric did not make use of hate speech, though it may have been implied at times.
At one point during the Yugoslav wars, Serbia had rejected further cooperation with the Croatian Serbs (the Republic of Serbian Krajina), and also with the Bosnian Serbs (the Republika Srpska, in 1993, when Serbia closed the border over the Drina river). This action by Milosevic was regarded as treason by many Serbs.
After the Dayton Agreement in 1995, the Serbian nationalists (Vojislav Šešelj's radical party) became his sturdy opponents, up until 1998 when they joined his party in a coalition government.
The trial was a controversial issue and has featured many conflicting and strange testimonies, which are viewed by all sides of the argument to support theories of cover-ups and dishonesty by the opposing parties. For example:
- the statement by William Walker, the US former ambassador to El Salvador during its war, that he did not remember phoning several senior US officials to say that, at Racak, he had discovered a justification for a NATO war, but did not dispute that officials who said they had received his calls were telling the truth,
- the testimony by General Wesley Clark that Milošević had come to him privately at a conference to admit to prior knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre and in the same evidence that NATO had no links to the KLA,
- the statement by Rade Marković that a written statement he had made implicating Milošević had been extracted from him by ill-treatment legally amounting to torture by named NATO officers,
- the statement by Lord Owen (author of the Vance Owen Plan) that Milošević was the only leader who had consistently supported peace and that any form of racism was personally "anathema" to him.
The prosecution took two years to present its case in the first part of the trial, where they covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Throughout the two-year period, the trial was being closely followed by the publics of the involved former Yugoslav republics as it covered various notable events from the war and included several high-profile witnesses.
Milošević got increasingly ill during this time (high blood pressure and severe flu), which caused intermissions and prolongued the trial by at least six months. In early 2004, when he finally appeared in court in order to start presenting his defense (announcing over 1,200 witnesses), the two ICTY judges decided to appoint him two defense lawyers in accordance with the medical opinions of the resident cardiologists. This action was opposed by Milošević himself and the pair of British lawyers appointed to him.
In October 2004, the trial was resumed after being suspended for a month to allow counsel Steven Kay, who complained Milošević was not cooperating, to prepare the defense. Steven Kay has since asked to be allowed to resign from his court appointed position, complaining that of the 1200 witnesses he has only been able to get five to testify. Many of the other witnesses refused to testify in protest of ICTYs decision not to permit Milošević to defend himself.
In November 2004, former Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov became the first high profile witness to testify for the defence.
It was considered likely that, if allowed to present his case, Milošević would attempt to establish that NATO's attack on Yugoslavia was aggressive, thus being a war crime under international law and that, while supporting the KLA, were aware that they had practiced and intended to continue practicing genocide, which is a crime against humanity. If a prima facie case for either claim were established, the ICTY would be legally obliged under its terms of reference to prepare an indictment against the leaders of most of the NATO countries, even though the Prosecutor already concluded an "inquiry" against the NATO leaders.
Defenders of Milošević
Some writers and journalists, among them political scientist Michael Parenti in his book To Kill a Nation, have argued that the actions of Milošević, and of the Serbs more broadly, were systematically exaggerated by the Western media and politicians during the Bosnian War in order to provide justification for military intervention.
The Emperor's Clothes Website [1] edited by Jared Israel has one of the most extensive collections of research and analysis critiquing what it calls media misinformation that has whitewashed the actions of NATO and its Yugoslav proxies and demonized the Serbs, creating a 'Media Milošević,' quite different from the real Milošević who was, if anything, an appeaser.
University of Pennsylvania Professor Francisco Gil-White's investigative journalism in Historical and Investigative Research [2] reveals documentation which, he believes, supports the claims that the criminality of Milošević's actions as President of Yugoslavia was exaggerated, if not wholly fabricated.
Paris-based journalist Diana Johnstone made the case in her book Fool's Crusade that Milošević's actions were marginal at best, and no worse than the crimes of the Croats or the Bosnian Muslims, also alleging that the massacre of Srebrenica has been exaggerated. Johnstone's independence has, however, been called into question by claims that she is a long-standing friend of Mirjana Marković, Milošević's wife.
Political scientist Edward Herman publicly endorsed Johnstone's findings in his review of Fool's Crusade in the Monthly Review [3]. His sometime co-author Noam Chomsky, while disagreeing with Johnstone's views on Milošević, the Serbs, and Srebrenica in particular, has in his book The New Military Humanism been critical of NATO's intervention and has suggested that the campaign was carried out with prior knowledge that the bombing would escalate the atrocities.
The International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević [4], led by Russian philosopher, sociologist and writer Aleksandr Zinovyev, included as its co-chairman the former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who in 2004 wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stating that "the Prosecution has failed to present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention of President Milošević" [5]. Members of the Committee included playwright and Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, who was a signatory to "Artists’ Appeal for Milošević", a statement that proclaimed Milošević's innocence and called for his release. [6]
As to his personal characteristics, former acquaintances have said that in private Milošević was patriarchal and conservative, devoted to his family and wife. His personality was marked by stubbornness—a trait of which he was proud; and his most devoted followers were older people, who had spent most of their lives in an era characterised by a moral code which they believed Milošević embodied. His stubbornness and unwillingness to compromise may be partly credited for the political problems and wars which marked his years in power, as well as his unrelenting defence in his trial. His lifelong devotion to his wife was reflected in the place of his burial, which is under the tree where they first kissed in 1958.
Death of Milošević
Milošević was found dead in his cell on March 11, 2006 in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre, in the Scheveningen section of The Hague. An official in the chief prosecutor's office said that he had been found at about 10 a.m. Saturday and had apparently been dead for several hours. His trial had been due to resume on 14 March with testimony from the former president of Montenegro, Momir Bulatović. A request for the autopsy in the presence of a Serbian pathologist was granted, and his body was transported to the Dutch Forensic Institute.
Cause of death
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia declared that Milošević had been suffering from heart problems and high blood pressure. Preliminary results of the autopsy, held in the Netherlands, show that he died of myocardial infarction, the scientific term for a heart attack. The tribunal warned it was impossible to rule out poisoning at the time of their statement, as the toxicological tests had not yet been completed.
On March 17, it was confirmed that preliminary results of blood tests showed no indication that Milosevic's death by heart attack was caused by poisoning. "So far no indications of poisoning have been found," Judge Fausto Pocar, president of the UN war crimes tribunal, told a news conference. "I would like to stress that these are provisional results." Tribunal registrar Hans Holthuis confirmed that traces of rifampicin -- a leprosy and tuberculosis drug that would have neutralized Milosevic's medicines for his high blood pressure and heart condition -- was found in an earlier January 12 blood test. But Pocar said no traces of the drug were found at the time of Milosevic's death. A preliminary autopsy report said the cause of death was a heart attack.
The tribunal had recently denied his request for travel to Russia for specialist medical treatment. Milošević planned to appeal against this decision, saying that his condition was worsening. Shortly before his death, he complained about wrong medical treatment to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed that it received the letter from Milošević with his medical complaints.
A legal advisor to Milošević presented a medical report from January 2006 to the international media. According to this report, Milošević's blood contained rifampicin, a drug that neutralized some of effects of his prescribed medicines for a heart condition and high blood pressure. It is unclear as to why he was taking rifampicin, as this drug is normally used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis. According to a report from Arab network Al-jazeera, Dutch toxicologist Donald Uges suggested that Milošević may have deliberately taken these drugs in order to get out of jail and seek medical treatment in Russia, where his wife and son were living in exile. This theory is semi-supported by sources at the war crimes tribunal, who say that Milošević had regular access to unprescribed drugs that were smuggled into his cell under a lax prison regime. Timothy McFadden, the prison governor responsible for Milošević, is reported to have complained in December and January that he could no longer monitor drugs taken by the former leader. His warnings went unheeded. Milošević had the key to his own office, which had a fax machine, a computer and a telephone, and access to a private “comfort room” for visits by his wife.
Milošević's lawyer, Zdenko Tomanović, told reporters that his client had feared he was being poisoned and said he had made a formal request for the autopsy to take place in Moscow. The tribunal rejected the request, saying a pathologist from Serbia would attend the autopsy. In his statement, Tomanović said, "I demanded protection for Slobodan Milošević over his claims that he was being poisoned. I still haven't received any reply and that's all I have to say at this time." According to Russian sources, experts failed to identify the cause of Milošević's death and required the autopsy.
Leo Bokeria, Director of Moscow's Bakulev Heart Surgery Center, confirmed that the former president had died of a heart attack, but said treatment in Moscow could have saved him. Bokeria said he saw "nothing showing signs of suicide", but there remained questions over whether Milošević received adequate care while standing trial at the U.N. tribunal. "If the patient was investigated enough...he would have still been alive today."
Reaction
According to the chief U.N. prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, "the death of Slobodan Milošević deprived victims of justice and made it more urgent to catch and extradite other Balkan leaders implicated in atrocities... You have the choice between normal, natural death and suicide".[4] Del Ponte concluded that suicide could not be ruled out and declined to comment on speculation that Milošević may have been poisoned.
In an interview with the Rome newspaper, La Repubblica, del Ponte said she was enraged by the death, only months before the verdict was due in his four-year-old trial. "I am furious," she said in the interview. "In an instant everything was lost ... the death of Milošević represents for me a total defeat."[5]
At a news conference on March 13 in The Hague, where the tribunal is based, Del Ponte said she could not rule out suicide. But first results from an autopsy released later in the day indicated he had died from a heart attack. She noted that Milošević's death was the second within a week at the tribunal's detention centre after the suicide of former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babić.
Kosovo's ethnic Albanians did not mourn Milošević; in fact, many were disappointed by his death, feeling the former Yugoslav president escaped justice before a verdict could be reached in his war crimes trial.
According to Peter Beaumont from The Observer, Milošević's death is a crushing blow to the tribunal and to those who wanted to establish an authoritative historical record of the Balkan wars. In a statement, Russia's Foreign Ministry implicitly criticized Milošević's's captors, saying: "Unfortunately, despite our guarantees, the tribunal did not agree to provide Milošević the possibility of treatment in Russia."
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told Ekho Moskvy radio that the decision not to allow Milošević to travel to Russia was "somewhat inhuman". Members of Milošević's Socialist Party also spoke out against that decision. "Milošević did not die in The Hague, he was killed in The Hague," said Ivica Dačić, a senior official.
Serbian President Boris Tadic said Monday the U.N. war crimes tribunal is responsible for Milošević's death, but he added that it would not hamper Serbia's future cooperation with the court. "Undoubtedly, Milošević had demanded a higher level of health care," Tadic said in an interview with The Associated Press. "That right should have been granted to all war crimes defendants." He added, "I think they are responsible for what happened." The Russian Duma was much more blunt: they condemned the activities of the Hague Tribunal and called for its disbandment.
According to the Telegraph, in death Milosevic proved to be as divisive a figure as he was in life, with the controversy over his funeral threatening to bring down the Serbian government. After two days of negotiations, Serbia's political leaders reached a compromise on Sunday night allowing Milosevic to be buried in his homeland, in the presence of his family. The funeral presented the government of prime minister Vojislav Kostunica with its most serious crisis since coming to power two years ago. The Socialist Party, which Milosevic led from his rise to power until his detention at the Hague Tribunal, threatened to walk out of Serbia's parliament during negotiations on the funeral. Though the Socialist Party is not officially part of the ruling coalition, the support of its 22 parliamentary members enables Mr Kostunica's weakened government to remain in power. Nationalists had demanded a state funeral for the late president and a prominent resting place in the "Alley of the Greats", where other Serbian leaders are buried. The Serbian President, Boris Tadic, rejected such requests.
Burial
Milošević's body arrived in Belgrade on March 15 for private burial in his home town, Pozarevac, after two days of behind-the-scenes wrangling by remaining loyalists for a higher-profile funeral in the capital. A small delegation from his Socialist Party was waiting there to pick up the coffin.
According to ABC news, Slobodan Milosevic's family has pulled out of his funeral, citing threats and a row over his resting place, as Serbia prepared a final farewell to the former leader whose 13 year rule brought the nation to its knees. A senior official in Milosevic's party said that neither his widow, Mira Markovic, nor son Marko would fly in for Saturday's funeral to take place on the grounds of the family home in Pozarevac, east of Belgrade. The official, Milorad Vucelic, said it was because Serbian authorities had made "contradictory statements", a reference to guarantees the family had been seeking that they would not be arrested. But he added that the decision was also taken "especially because of threats and blackmail addressed to Mira Markovic", who is widely believed to have been living in Russia since 2003.
According to the Independent, Serbian [anti-Milosevic] opposition politicians have reacted with fury to the government's decision to put Slobodan Milosevic's coffin on display in Belgrade's Museum of the Revolution.
According to the BBC, thousands of Serbs have gathered to say farewell to Milosevic, one week after he died at The Hague war crimes tribunal, up to 100,000 people packed a square and surrounding streets outside the federal parliament of Serbia and Montenegro, many weeping, clutching photos of the former leader and shouting his nickname "Slobo, Slobo". "Today we are bidding farewell to the best man among us," said Milorad Vucelic, a senior official from Mr Milosevic's Socialist Party. Few foreign dignitaries attended, although a senior MP from Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party was present in a private capacity. Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, a longtime Milosevic supporter, was among the speakers.
According to Reuters, Milosevic's daughter on Sunday denounced the former Serbian president's funeral, saying his Socialist Party had hijacked it for political ends. Socialist officials and other prominent supporters made a succession of fiery speeches at a gathering of tens of thousands of people in Belgrade on Saturday before Milosevic's coffin was taken to the provincial town of Pozarevac for burial.
Conspiracy theories
A few days after Milošević's death a Trojan horse Dropper-FB began to spread purportedly speculating about his cause of death. An email included a subject "Slobodan Milosevic was killed" and mentions that attached photos reveal more about his death. [7]
Rush Limbaugh has mentioned that there exists "speculation" that Milosevic "might have been poisoned by somebody." Limbaugh told his listeners: "I'm not drawing any conclusions ... but it has been reported that Slobo was considering calling Bill Clinton as a witness." Limbaugh added: "He hadn't made the formal request but was considering it. And now, Slobo is no more." [8]
References
- ↑ BBC News (2006). Milosevic suffered heart attack
- ↑ a b ICTY (2001). Initial indicement against Milošević on crimes in Croatia.
- ↑ ICTY (2001). Initial indicement against Milošević on crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- ↑ AbcNews - Story 1715425
- ↑ Nzz.ch article 6542703
Further reading
External links
BBC News - Have Your Say
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