Slobodan Milosevic found dead in prison cell [Archive]

Troll

03-11-2006, 10:49am

Slobodan Milosevic found dead in prison cell
Former Yugoslav president was on trial for war crimes at The Hague

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader who orchestrated the Balkan wars of the 1990s and was on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his prison cell near The Hague, the U.N. tribunal said Saturday.

Milosevic, 64, apparently died of natural causes, a tribunal press officer said. He was found dead in his bed at the U.N. detention center.

Milosevic has been on trial since February 2002, defending himself against 66 counts of crimes, including genocide, in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The trial repeatedly was interrupted by Milosevic’s poor health and chronic heart condition. It was recessed last week until Tuesday to await his next defense witness.

His death comes less than a week after the star witness in his trial, former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, was found dead in the same prison. Babic, who was serving a 13-year prison sentence, committed suicide. He testified against Milosevic in 2002.

A figure of beguiling charm and cunning ruthlessness, Milosevic was a master tactician who turned his country’s defeats into personal victories and held onto power for 13 years despite losing four wars that shattered his nation and impoverished his people.

Milosevic led Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, into four Balkan wars, but always managed to emerge politically stronger. The secret of his survival was his uncanny ability to exploit what less adroit figures would consider a fatal blow.

Each time he would bounce back, skillfully reinventing himself in a series of political transformations — as a devout communist, a reform-minded nationalist, and again as a communist at a time when most of the world had abandoned Marxist ideology.

He once described himself as the “Ayatollah Khomeini of Serbia,” assuring his prime minister, Milan Panic, that “the Serbs will follow me no matter what.” For years, they did — through wars which dismembered Yugoslavia and plunged what was left of the country into social, political, moral and economic ruin.

But in the end, his people abandoned him: first in October 2000, when he was unable to convince the majority of Yugoslavs that he had staved off electoral defeat by his successor, Vojislav Kostunica, and again on April 1, 2001, when he surrendered after a 26-hour standoff to face criminal charges stemming from his ruinous rule.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11777120/

Troll

03-12-2006, 6:20pm

U.N. official: Milosevic died of heart attack
Former Yugoslav leader's death ends four-year war crimes trial

THE HAGUE - Preliminary results from an autopsy conducted Sunday showed that Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack, an official of the U.N. war crimes tribunal said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information, said the autopsy lasted about eight hours. Milosevic, 64, was found dead in his cell outside The Hague on Saturday.

He had suffered heart ailments, high blood pressure and headaches, forcing numerous delays in his four-year war crimes trial.

A tribunal spokeswoman could not immediately comment but said a statement on the autopsy findings would be released shortly.

The announcement came shortly after Dutch pathologists performed an autopsy on Milosevic’s remains Sunday amid claims by the former Yugoslav leader’s supporters that he was poisoned and a statement by the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor raising the possibility he committed suicide. He asked the tribunal for permission to seek treatment in Russia, but that request was denied.

Milosevic's death abruptly ended his four-year U.N. war crimes trial for orchestrating a decade of conflict that killed 250,000 people and tore the Yugoslav federation asunder. No verdict will be issued.

Honoring their fallen hero
In Serbia, hundreds of Milosevic followers lit candles in his memory of their fallen hero at Socialist Party branches. Flags flew at half-staff outside party headquarters in Belgrade.

Elderly women sobbed and kissed Milosevic photographs, adorned with black cloths of mourning, while nationalists signed condolence books for the late Yugoslav president, declaring him a defender of “Serb honor.”

War crimes tribunal President Fausto Pocar said he ordered the autopsy and a toxicological examination after a Dutch coroner failed Saturday to establish the cause of death. Serbia sent a pathologist to observe the autopsy at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, which is controlled by the Dutch Justice Ministry.

Outside the tribunal on Sunday, Milosevic’s legal adviser showed reporters a six-page letter he said the former leader wrote Friday claiming that traces of a “heavy drug” was found in his bloodstream, and he feared being poisoned.

The letter alleged that a drug used to treat leprosy or tuberculosis was found in his blood during a Jan. 12 medical exam, Zdenko Tomanovic said.

“They would like to poison me,” the lawyer quoted Milosevic as telling him.

Tomanovic also complained that the court rejected the Milosevic family’s request that an autopsy be conducted outside the Netherlands.

Brother faults tribunal
Milosevic’s older brother, Borislav, said the family did not trust the tribunal to carry out an impartial autopsy. He also blamed the tribunal for his brother’s death because it rejected his request to get medical treatment in Russia, which offered assurances that Milosevic would be returned to finish his trial.

The letter, dated March 10, was addressed to the Russian Embassy. A one-line English language cover note asked the embassy to forward the letter to the Russian foreign minister.

Tomanovic said he saw the jailed Serb leader Friday at 4:30 p.m. Milosevic’s body was found the next morning.

The tribunal earlier said there were no outward signs of suicide or unnatural causes of death.

But chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said suicide could not be ruled out until the autopsy results were released either late Sunday or early Monday. Both of Milosevic’s parents committed suicide, as did a fellow war crimes defendant last week.

“You have the choice between a normal, natural death and suicide, and of course it could be possible,” she said. “It is a possibility.” However, she said talk of suicide or poisoning was just “rumors.”

For victims, justice denied
Del Ponte also said Milosevic’s death deprived victims of justice and made it more urgent to catch and extradite other Balkan leaders implicated in atrocities.

“It is a great pity for justice that the trial will not be completed and no verdict will be rendered,” Del Ponte said.

Del Ponte said the trials of eight other suspects indicted for the massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 will help establish the record on Milosevic’s involvement in the worst slaughter in Europe since World War II.

She said it was “more urgent than ever” to arrest former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top military officer, Ratko Mladic, who were indicted in 1995 on charges of orchestrating the massacre. Both remain at large.

The president of Serbia’s Socialist Party, Ivica Dacic, said Milosevic had successfully protected Serbia’s national and state interests during his defense.

“He has fully defeated Carla Del Ponte’s accusations that Serbia and Serbian nationals are genocidal and that they have ethnically cleansed the people of the former Yugoslavia,” Dacic said.

Milosevic’s death came nearly five years after he was arrested by Serb authorities and extradited to The Hague as the first sitting head of state ever to be indicted for war crimes.

His health problems caused numerous long recesses in his trial on 66 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Del Ponte said the trial was close to completion this spring. After 466 trial days, only 50 days remained, she told reporters at the U.N. Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Prosecutor: ‘Sufficient evidence’
Del Ponte said the case against Milosevic was strong. In June 2004, the three judges rejected a defense motion to dismiss the case, which she said confirmed there was “sufficient evidence capable of supporting conviction for the 66 counts.”

Milosevic died less than a week after former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic committed suicide in the same prison in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague. Babic, once a Milosevic ally, was a key prosecution witness.

A leader of beguiling charm and cunning ruthlessness, Milosevic was reviled by the United States as “the butcher of the Balkans” but was a hero to many Serbs, despite losing four wars and impoverishing his people in the 1990s while trying to create a “Greater Serbia” linking Serbia with Serb-dominated areas of Croatia and Bosnia.

Clinton: Trial a reminder for future
“I am sorry that his trial will not be completed, and that he did not acknowledge and apologize for his crimes before his death,” former President Clinton, whose decision to authorize NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 helped bring Milosevic down, said in a statement.

“Nevertheless, his capture and trial will serve as a reminder that egregious crimes against humanity will not be tolerated.”

Milosevic was accused of being behind a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against non-Serbs during the wars that erupted as the Yugoslav federation began breaking apart in 1991, and his death was cheered by many in the Balkans.

Milosevic’s trial and Saddam Hussein’s war crimes proceeding in Iraq were widely seen as together constituting the most important legal test for the international community since German and Japanese leaders were tried after World War II.

Both trials were sharply criticized for frequent interruptions and the ability of the defendants to use the courtroom as a stage to launch vitriolic anti-Western diatribes. Reveling in the spotlight, Milosevic insisted on being his own defense lawyer.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11791534/