Milosevic (54 page)

Such accounts of brutality all seem a long way from the ICTY, housed in a former insurance building near the quiet tree-lined streets of Dutch suburbia. Polite, but armed and burly UN policemen scrutinise each visitor's identity documents, before ushering them through two metal detectors. Armed police also control entrance to all office and other areas. After a shaky start in 1993, by September 2001 the ICTY had transformed itself into a major international operation, with an annual budget of $96 million, employing 1,188 staff members from seventy-seven countries. In April 2002, there were forty prisoners held at the ICTY's detention unit. Eight other accused had been provisionally released pending trial, while more than twenty arrest warrants remained outstanding. Cases are also pending, or have been concluded, against Croats, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims. After sentencing, prisoners are sent to another European country to serve their sentences.

Two television monitors in the foyer announce the days proceedings. The courtroom is open to all. The Milosevic trial is the most popular, and is now a stop on the Hague tourist trail. Visitors walk up a curved staircase and sit in the public seating area. Simultaneous translation is provided in several languages including English and Albanian. Spectators are divided from the courtroom by a plate-glass wall, but otherwise open
sessions are held in full public view. There is little sense here of the drama that accompanied the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The most important court case of the new millennium resembles a municipal council meeting. Presiding Judge Richard May sits on a raised dais, between two others. Milosevic sits at one end of the courtroom, usually dressed in one of his double-breasted suits, with a light-coloured shirt offset by a silk tie. He is flanked continuously by two beefy armed policemen.

Milosevic conducts his own defence, aided by one of his Belgrade legal team who sit in the public gallery. His tactics are, broadly, political harangues against the West and NATO for bombing Serbia, which he blames for the mass exodus of Kosovo Albanians, combined with very detailed personal attacks on the character and testimony of witnesses. Many believe that such precise information comes from sympathisers within the new regime. Observers point out that Milosevic's ability to access such information from a prison cell will eventually undercut any defence that he did not know what was happening, for example, at Vukovar, or Srebrenica.

Wary perhaps of being accused of bias, the judges grant Milosevic plenty of leeway. Milosevic's rants provide an intriguing window into his mindset. In a courtroom duel with Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, on 3 May 2002, Milosevic expounded his favourite conspiracy theory that an ‘anti-Serbian policy' was instituted throughout the last decade, ‘intended to annul and change the outcome of the First and Second World Wars'.
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Milosevic then claimed that Germany supported the Kosovo Albanians as a reward for the ‘massive participation of Albanian formations on the side of Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War'.

There are perhaps are two Slobodan Milosevics. One is a charming Balkan rogue – or at least he wants to be seen as one – a confidant of presidents and ambassadors, a deft schmoozer of western diplomats, trying his best to bring his wayward protégés such as Radovan Karadzic to heel. The other is an authoritarian provincial Communist functionary of limited vision and a poor strategic sense.

It is the second Milosevic that is on display at The Hague. His courtroom technique has the effect of intimidating witnesses, often cowed and frightened Albanians who lost their nearest and dearest in the Kosovo war. Milosevic does not show sympathy. Instead he sits back, not exactly sprawled, but certainly comfortable and confident in his chair, before pouncing. He is a commanding presence in the
courtroom. Ibrahim Rugova, in contrast, sat hunched and defensive, although it was Milosevic, not he, who was on trial.

Yet like all bullies, Milosevic buckles when he is met with equal force. One of the few courtroom encounters that have left Milosevic flustered was a duel with Lord Ashdown, now the UN High Representative in Bosnia. Ashdown had made repeated visits to Yugoslavia during the Milosevic era. A former soldier in the Special Boat Squadron, Ashdown was calmly confident as he took on Milosevic in mid-March 2002. Ashdown recalled with a certain relish their September 1998 meeting after his visit to Kosovo: ‘I warned you that you would end up in this court, and here you are.'

Eventually, when Milosevic steps over the limit, Judge Richard May calls him to order. He often addresses Milosevic in weary familiar tone of old married couples compelled by circumstance to spend lengthy and unwelcome periods of time in a confined space. ‘Mis-ter Mi-lo-se-vic,' he sighs, before bringing the defendant back to the matter in hand. Milosevic's wild rhetoric highlights the fact that for a lawyer, his courtroom technique is poor. Less bombast, and more facts would make a more powerful argument. For example, it is now widely believed – and admitted by western diplomats – that German demands in the summer of 1991 for early recognition of Croatian independence, without adequate human rights guarantees for the Serb minority, did accelerate the drive to war. While there was no ‘massive' participation of Albanians on the Axis side, several thousand Albanians did join their own dedicated SS division, named after their national hero, Skenderbeg. Albanian SS troops rounded up 281 Kosovo Jews and also aided the German withdrawal from the Balkans.
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Milosevic's indictment for Kosovo is comparatively straightforward. About 800,000 Kosovars were forced from their home by Serb and Yugoslav troops while Milosevic, as Yugoslav President and head of state, was commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav military. Croatia and Bosnia are more complicated, as both of these countries had declared independence and so were sovereign states.

Milosevic's indictment for war crimes in Croatia is thirty-two pages long, with a thirty-one-page annex of civilian deaths from Serb forces. Milosevic is accused of ‘exercising effective control or substantial influence' over the participants in a ‘joint criminal enterprise'. Its aim 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 [Milosevic] planned to become part of a new Serb-dominated state,'
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through murder, terror and ethnic cleansing.

Another fourteen individuals are accused of participating, including Milosevic's political fixer during the early 1990s Borisav Jovic; the leaders of the rebel Krajina Serbs Milan Martic and the former dentist Milan Babic; Milosevic's former intelligence chief Jovica Stanisic, Franko Simatovic, leader of the Special Operations Unit; the ultranationalist paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj, Zeljko Raznatovic and Radovan Stojicic (a.k.a. Arkan and Badza). Arkan and Badza are dead. Milan Martic, also separately indicted for war crimes, surrendered to the ICTY in May 2002. Borisav Jovic lives in Belgrade where he has reinvented himself as an author and television pundit. Seselj is an MP in the Serbian parliament, representing the Serbian Radical Party, which won twenty-three seats in the December 2001 elections. The others are living freely, probably in Serbia.

Milosevic's indictment for war crimes and genocide in Bosnia is twenty-five pages long with a fifteen-page annex. It is framed in similar terms as a ‘joint criminal enterprise', under his effective control. Of the fourteen alleged members of the Bosnian joint criminal enterprise, several are familiar from the Croatia indictment including Borisav Jovic, Seselj and Arkan. Also named are Radovan Karadzic and the architect of the Srebrenica massacre, General Ratko Mladic. Karadzic and Mladic have also been separately indicted.

Uniquely in the Milosevic case, the tribunal decided to list the co-conspirators. All are under investigation for war crimes by the ICTY but have not been indicted. Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt said:

We usually do not do this, as people could sabotage the investigation. Also they may never be charged, so it would not be fair to have this hanging over them for the rest of their lives. But based on their participation in the joint criminal conspiracy, it was obvious who they were. Naming them adds pressure to co-operate. We are confident, and we expect to indict all the co-perpetrators. Some may want to co-operate and do deals.
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The human tragedy of the Bosnian war is detailed in court documents such as Schedule E of Milosevic's Bosnia indictment. This details sniping incidents during the siege of Sarajevo. Anisa Pita, aged three, was shot in
the right leg while taking off her shoes on the porch of her house on 13 December 1992. Dzenana Sokolovic, aged thirty-one, was walking home with her son Nermin, aged seven, on 18 November 1994. Mother and son had been collecting firewood. The bullet passed through Dzenana's abdomen and into her son's head, killing him. Lejla Bajramovic, aged twenty-four, was sitting in a friend's apartment on 8 December 1994, when she was shot in the head. And so it goes on, rows of names and figures.

Away from the high theatre of the Milosevic trial, less attention is given to the lower profile cases unfolding in the smaller courtrooms. Here the wheels of justice turn quietly and steadily. The Bosnian Serb General Stanislav Galic is accused of war crimes for overseeing the siege of Sarajevo. Galic, a grey man in a grey suit, was commander of the Sarajevo Romanija Corps – formerly the 4
^th
corps of the Second Military District of the Yugoslav army. These were the soldiers who lobbed mortars at civilians queuing for relief aid, and shot down women and children in the street. As Milosevic himself told Bosnian prime minister Haris Silajdzic at Dayton, ‘You deserve Sarajevo because you fought for it, and those cowards killed you from the hills.'
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Galic's defence is that he was unaware that innocent people were being killed and that fire was directed against military targets. This is hard to believe, when Bosnian Serbs were often just a couple of hundred metres from government-controlled territory. UN military observers who had visited the Serb siege lines also testified at Galic's trial. Jacques Kolp, a Belgian, said, ‘The Army of Republika Srpska had good artillerymen . . . they knew exactly what they were hitting.' Major Jeremy Herme noted that, ‘Actually where the shells hit, there were no military targets.'
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Muhamed Kapetanovic was not a military target. In January 1994, Kapetanovic, then aged nine, was playing with his friends in the winter snow in the Sarajevo suburb of Alipasino Polje when Bosnian Serbs began firing mortars at them. He told the court: ‘We were riding sleighs when we heard grenades falling. Then we got scared and started to run . . . Daniel was killed, I was wounded and Admir and Elvir were also wounded.' Six people were killed in the attack, mainly children. Wounded in the head and leg by shrapnel, Muhamed was medically evacuated to Italy. He had seven operations in two years. Italian surgeons managed to save his leg, although it is 2.5 cm shorter
than the other. Admir underwent twelve operations before his leg was eventually amputated. Elvir escaped with superficial wounds.
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The two most wanted, Radovan Karadzic and General Mladic, remain at large. Mladic was widely reported to be living in Belgrade for some time, but Serbian authorities deny he is still in the country. Karadzic is in Bosnia, where he has so far escaped arrest, despite the presence of a heavily armed NATO force. Both men remain popular among a section of the Serbian population who regard them as national heroes. In spring 2002 supporters of Karadzic staged his new play
Situation
in Belgrade, a drama ridiculing the international community in Bosnia.

These are hard times for the Milosevic family. None of the former statesmen who once courted his views so assiduously have visited Slobodan in prison. Richard Holbrooke and Lord Owen have yet to arrive bearing maps of Bosnia and felt-tip pens to divide it with. Nor has Lord Hurd turned up for a working prison breakfast, although Milosevic certainly could now make good use of his own private telephone network.

Mira visits her husband every month for a few days. She is given a special visa by the Dutch government. Even though he is now in prison, he does not feel betrayed, she said.

Neither East nor West has betrayed him. The only person that can betray him is me. But people have short memories and you have to remind everyone of everything. In the early 1990s my husband was accused by many circles, in Yugoslavia and abroad, that he wanted to keep Yugoslavia alive, even though it was falling apart and the Croats and the Slovenes wanted to leave. That was his big sin. Crazy Serbs and crazy Slobo, they said, they want Yugoslavia. Now in The Hague, they say he broke up Yugoslavia. Let them make their minds up.
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Although there are criminal charges outstanding against Marko over the case of Zoran Milanovic, the former Madona waiter who joined Otpor, he could return home to face them. If found guilty, after serving his sentence, Marko could live openly. Neither he, his sister, nor his mother is wanted by the ICTY. However, many in Belgrade believe that fear of retribution from forces outside the law prevents Marko from returning. During the last years of his father's regime, as his business grew rich on the proceeds of crime, Marko rarely left Pozarevac, and always
travelled accompanied by several gun-toting bodyguards in an armoured vehicle. Such security would no longer be provided by the state. The family name that once protected him is now the greatest danger to his safety.

Marija lives freely, although she still wrestles with her own inner demons. In December 2001 Marija appeared in court in Belgrade accused of endangering public safety and illegal possession of a handgun, after she had shot in the air five times when her father was arrested. ‘I fired into the sky, I emptied my pistol out of despair,' she said. She came to court without her mother, but with her bodyguard. Marija did not go to prison, and there are no more charges outstanding against her.