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 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 became
increasingly ill during this time (high blood pressure and severe
flu), which caused intermissions and prolonged 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 late 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 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". 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.
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
It seems to be
established that Milošević died of a heart attack. However,
suspicions have been voiced, notably:
1. that he was
deliberately given a wrong medicine that caused the heart attack;
2. that he took a
wrong medicine himself in order to worsen his condition or commit
suicide;
3. that he was,
deliberately or through negligence, not given the standard treatment
that would have prevented the heart attack.
As both the
prosecution and the defence had generally (with very few exceptions)
evaluated the trial as a legal and/or moral defeat for the opposite
side, and as this conviction was widely shared by their respective
sympathizers, both sides believed or claimed to believe that Milošević's
death had been in the interest of their opponents, hence the mutual
accusations.
Milošević had
been suffering from heart problems and high
blood pressure. Initially, the Dutch coroner
failed to establish the cause of death [7].
Consequently, the president of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ordered an autopsy
and a toxicological investigation. Immediately after the death was
announced, rumours that he had been poisoned started circulating.
On March 12th, an
autopsy was held in the Netherlands;
its preliminary results showed that he had 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.
The tribunal had
recently denied Milošević's request for travel to Russia
for specialist medical treatment. He 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. In the
letter as provided by Milošević's lawyer Zdenko Tomanović[8],
Milošević complained that he was being given a drug used against
tuberculosis and leprosy (however, he didn't imply that he was aware
of any particular side effects of the drug) and that even though the
medical report containing that information dated from January 12th,
he had only received it two months later, on March 7th (the day
before the date of the letter). The same was reported later by
former pro-Milošević Montenegrin president Momir
Bulatović, who was due to testify for Milošević's defence.
According to Bulatović, Milošević had stopped taking the drug and
consequently was afraid of being poisoned. In his letter, Milošević
motivated his desire to be treated in Russia, an unusual destination
for treatment for heart disease, saying that "those who foist
on me a drug against leprosy... and who have an interest to silence
me" "surely can't treat my illness".
On March 12th,
lawyer Zdenko Tomanović told reporters that his client had feared
he was being poisoned and cited the aforementioned letter, as well
as the medical report from January 2006, according to which Milošević's
blood contained rifampicin
- a drug that is normally used to treat leprosy
and tuberculosis
drug and which would have neutralized
some of the effects of Milosevic's medicines for his high blood
pressure and heart condition. Tomanović said he had made a formal
request for the autopsy to take place in Moscow. The tribunal
rejected the request, allowing instead a pathologist from Serbia to
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."
On March 13th,
Dutch toxicologist Donald Uges confirmed that the drug had been
found in Milošević's blood and 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.
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
-- were 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.
According to The Hague district public prosecutor Moraal, referring
to the NFI/Dutch Forensic Institute, "rifampicin disappears
from the body quickly, and the fact that no traces were found
implies only that it is not likely that rifampicin had been ingested
or administered in the last few days before death".
Leo Bokeria,
Director of Moscow's Bakulev Heart Surgery Center, confirmed that
the former president had died of a heart attack, but said adequate
treatment in Moscow or in any one of many countries, including the
Netherlands, would have saved him. According to Bokeria, the
necessary medical procedures (coronary
angiography and stenting)
were "elementary". He 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." Bokeria also claimed
that the Center had sent Pocar a letter informing him that Milošević
needed hospital treatment and naming several countries beside Russia
where that could be done.
The Times'
medical columnist Thomas
Stuttaford commented that, taking into account what had been
known about Milošević's health condition for years, he was "surprised
that he (Milošević) lived for as long as he did". According
to Stuttaford, given the data that existed, he "should have
been considered for a coronary
bypass or angioplasty
(unblocking of the arteries)"; while these operations might be
rendered impossible by severe heart defects, that can only be
established by "a careful analysis of the heart, and one would
have thought that if this had been done, someone would have
mentioned it". Using rifampicin might have been "a cunning
way to kill a man that needs no expertise".
According to April
5 Aljazeera report, the Dutch investigation into the death of
Slobodan Milosevic has concluded that he died of natural causes (a
heart attack), and final toxicological studies have confirmed there
were no traces of poisoning or substances which could have triggered
the heart attack. The prosecutors also announced that although
non-prescribed medicines had been found in Milosevic's cell in
December 2005, no such medicines were found in his cell the day
after he died. The president of the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal
welcomed the final report that formally closed the Dutch
investigation, but he said the tribunal will continue investigating
the medical treatment Milosevic received in detention.
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".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."
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.
According
to Moscow News, Russian MP Sliska stressed that doctors were
very well aware of Milosevic’s poor health condition. He
suffered from high blood pressure and heart problems. She reminded
that Moscow time and again asked the Tribunal to let Milosevic visit
a Russian hospital. The ones who prohibited a treatment course for
the former Yugoslavian president will have his death on their
conscience and, thus, they have to resign, the MP stressed. In
Sliska’s point of view, the death of Milosevic will seriously
undermine the authority of the UN war crimes tribunal.
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.
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."
