Milosevic (53 page)

And he was.

It's Your Problem
2001–2

His perversion of the truth was simply superb, and we used to say of him that he could make a man believe that Paris was really the capital of England and prove it by statistics.

Reginald Wyon, early twentieth-century British foreign correspondent, on Hilmi Pacha, governor of Macedonia.
¹

Most days Milosevic gets up around 7.00 a.m. He showers and shaves in his cell at the UN detention centre, a short drive from the ICTY at The Hague. If he is feeling spry he greets his fellow inmates with a cheery ‘Good morning, comrades!' ‘Good morning, Mr President,' the Serbs among them reply. His nine foot by fifteen foot cell boasts cable television, a coffee machine, and a shower. He is reading a lot of Ernest Hemingway and John Updike. In more reflective moments he listens to Celine Dion and Frank Sinatra on a portable CD player. ‘My Way' is one of his favourites.
²
Milosevic can use the gym, prepare his own food in a kitchen. He is not beaten, forced to sing nationalist songs, or worse. There is an intimacy room, where husband and wife may enjoy conjugal visits. One prisoner has already conceived a son. Free of the stresses of running a country, sleeping and eating well, no longer downing Viljamovka by the bottle, Milosevic's health has improved since his incarceration.

Mr President enjoys a certain status. He served as the best man at the wedding of Predrag Banovic in mid-May 2002. Banovic is charged with beating prisoners to death at the Bosnian Serb concentration camp of Keraterm, in 1992. Predrag Banovic was arrested with his twin brother Nenad in November 2001 in Belgrade. Nenad was released for lack
of evidence. Back in Belgrade he told B92 Television how Milosevic is a rock, on whom distressed prisoners often lean. ‘When somebody is shattered, there is the president to give us advice, to help.' He described Milosevic as ‘a stable and courageous person'. Milosevic offers advice such as ‘Nothing lasts forever', and ‘One should stabilise oneself, meaning pull yourself together.'
³
Walking through the prison courtyard Milosevic might get a whiff of the crisp salty air of the Dutch seaside. Perhaps he enjoys a Proustian moment, briefly remembering long-ago family holidays in the old Yugoslavia, driving the family Volkswagen from Belgrade down to the coast at Dubrovnik, with Mira in the front, Marko and Marija in the back.

After Milosevic's fall from power on 5 October 2000, a democratic government took over in Yugoslavia. But virtually the only thing uniting the new regime was its opposition to Milosevic. The DOS coalition immediately split into two camps: conservative nationalists under Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, and pro-western reformers under Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. The West, especially the United States, made it clear that future economic aid to Yugoslavia was contingent on Milosevic's extradition. Kostunica was opposed to the very idea of The Hague, let alone extraditing Milosevic. Djindjic took a more pragmatic view.

Kostunica allowed Milosevic, Mira, Milica and baby Marko to continue living in Tito's former residence at Uzicka 15. Marko quickly fled Serbia. His perfumerie ‘Scandal', in downtown Belgrade, was completely destroyed and the Madona disco vandalised. Marko fled to Moscow, home to his uncle Borislav. From Moscow he sought sanctuary in Beijing, but despite Mira's admiration for China, he was turned back on 9 October, and returned to Moscow. Mira ‘cannot say' where he is now, but he is widely believed to be somewhere in the former Soviet Union. There were reports that Marko intended to set up in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and build a replica Madona disco. However the
de facto
inclusion of Kazakhstan in the US's war against terror, and the protective trade practices of the Kazakh entertainment sector, makes this unlikely.

When Serbia went to the polls in December 2001, Milosevic's Socialists did surprisingly well. The DOS coalition won 64 per cent, but the Socialists took 13 per cent of the votes, making the party the largest opposition grouping with 35 seats. Milosevic retired from
public life, but did not disappear. In an interview that month with Palma television, he said his ‘conscience is clear and he can sleep well'. He accused Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia of being in the front lines of the October 5 revolution, and blamed them for sanctions and lowering the quality of life in Yugoslavia. The following month, Rade Markovic, head of the Serbian intelligence services, and Milosevic's old ally, Mihalj Kertes, head of the customs service, were both arrested.

The new authorities opened an investigation into Milosevic's abuse of power in Serbia. Serbian police finally moved to arrest Milosevic on 31 March 2001. By then the mordant joke about ever-shrinking Serbia had more or less become true. Milosevic prepared to go out fighting. An impressive arsenal was assembled at the house on Uzicka including: two machine guns; thirty assault rifles, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher; ten cases of ammunition; twenty-three pistols and two cases of hand grenades. Marija Milosevic alone was packing three pistols: a Beretta, a Walther and a Derringer. Sinisa Vucinic, a political ally of Milosevic's wife Mira, was manning a machine gun.
⁴

The police had launched their first charge in the early hours of Saturday morning. Masked plain-clothes commandos smashed their way through the windows and tried to storm the residence. But their attack met heavy resistance, bullets flew across the garden as the defenders opened up. Two police officers were wounded, and a photographer hurt as well. But when Milosevic lost control over his own back garden, as the police commandos there prepared for another raid, even he began to wonder if it was all over. In the early hours of Sunday morning negotiations started. Members of Milosevic's own Socialist Party tried to persuade him and his defenders to lay down their arms. The dawn sunlight brought a new clarity. Milosevic told his lawyer he was ready to surrender.

An investigating judge entered the house and read out the list of charges against him. These included financial misdealings, damaging Serbia's economy and introducing hyperinflation. At the same time a statement was presented, signed by Yugoslav President Kostunica, Serbian Prime Minister Djindjic and Serbian President Milan Milutinovic (also wanted by the ICTY). The statement said that the criminal proceedings against Milosevic were not instituted by The Hague, and guaranteed the safety and property of both Milosevic and his family. The key points were added in two typewritten annexes:

• Slobodan Milosevic will not be handed over to any judicial or other institution outside the country.

• Slobodan Milosevic has guarantees for the daily visits of his family.
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The annexes were signed under the authorisation of Serbian President Djindjic, and signed by a DOS official, Cedomir Jovanovic.

Amazingly, despite the bluster and the shooting, and the amount of alcohol and weapons everywhere, no one had died. Slobo's last stand was more Balkan farce than Bonnie and Clyde. But his arrest was real enough. At 4.30 a.m. he walked through his front door for the last time. Mira recalled: ‘Our home was full of friends, Marija and I were also there, and people working in the residence, more than fifty people were there . . . They came into the house, and said either we arrest you and take you with us, or we will kill everyone. So what else could he do, just sit in the car? He did not blink an eye, and said of course I will go and he left.'
⁶

After taking several of her mother's tranquillisers, and drinking most of a bottle of cognac, a despairing Marija fired five shots into the air as her father was driven off. Bracketed by a convoy of police jeeps, Milosevic was driven to a cell at Belgrade's central prison. Inmate 101980 was housed in the most comfortable wing of the prison, nicknamed ‘The Hyatt'. The fourteen-square-metre cells there boasted an
en suite
shower, toilet and sink, and hot running water.

The details of Milosevic's stay in prison were published in a book by the prison governor Dragisa Blanusa, who was promptly sacked.
I Guarded Milosevic
reveals how the former president snored, made fruit tea, ate a lot of beans and smoked Serbian cigarettes. Mira arrived every day at noon, with a packed lunch.
⁷
She even brought painted eggs at Easter, although neither is religious. Sometimes she lost her temper and harangued prison staff, although she later apologised, blaming ‘a surplus of female hormones'. The former ruling couple spent an hour together, holding hands, kissing each other and stroking each other's faces. Milosevic was always polite and correct with prison staff, as he is at The Hague.

It was while Milosevic was incarcerated in cell 1121 that the news broke in Serbia that would speed his extradition. In early summer 2001 a series of mass graves of Kosovo Albanians were discovered. Not in Croatia, Bosnia or even Kosovo, but the heartlands of Serbia
itself, including one at Batajnica military base, just outside Belgrade. The corpses had been moved north during the bombing campaign. Yugoslav leaders warned Milosevic that if and when NATO troops entered Kosovo, they would find evidence of massacres. Informed of this Milosevic reportedly told his top brass to ‘take care of it.'
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They did not do a very good job. Sanitation workers in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren were summoned in the middle of the night and driven to an army rifle range. The workers were ordered to load the corpses into a white refrigerator truck. In April 2000 a fisherman saw a truck from a food processing company in Prizren floating in the Danube. When local police opened the vehicle a human leg fell out. Inside were 86 bodies, which were then taken to Batajnica base. The details of the killings, and the botched attempts to dispose of the bodies were a profound psychological shock for many Serbs. Vital testimony was provided by conscience stricken Serbs who had been ordered to take part in the disposal exercise.

On 28 June 2001 Serb Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic chaired a meeting of the Serbian government. 28 June, St Vitus's Day, or Vidovdan, was the date of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on Vidovdan in 1914. The decree authorising Milosevic's extradition was approved by fourteen votes to one, the sole dissenter a member of Vojislav Kostunica's party.

Three hours later Milosevic was told to pack his bag. He asked where he was going, but the answer was obvious. The new government had deceived her husband with a false promise, said Mira. ‘They brought a document signed by the Yugoslav president and the Serbian prime minister, and other top officials. He was given this document and we believed it. We believed it. If my husband had signed something, he would not have breached it, as this current president did.'

Milosevic was taken to a police base. Fearful that the army might intervene, Djindjic had ordered an aircraft to land there as a feint, but the military did not move. In what appeared to be a well co-ordinated operation between Belgrade, London and Washington, Milosevic was then taken by helicopter to the US military base at Tuzla in northern Bosnia. From Tuzla Milosevic was flown in an RAF jet to a Dutch military base. At 11.00 p.m. he was led through the gate of the UN detention centre.

* * *

Milosevic's initial fury against the court appears to have abated. When he first appeared in court before the presiding judge Richard May on 3 July 2000 he refused to enter a plea. He condemned the ICTY as ‘a false tribunal' and an ‘illegal organ'.
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It was an unedifying performance for a former head of state. When Judge Richard May asked if he wanted the indictment read out to him Milosevic replied, ‘It's your problem'. Which was incorrect, as it is very much Milosevic's problem. All three indictments against him since have been rolled into one. Milosevic is charged with crimes against humanity in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia, as well as genocide in Bosnia.

Milosevic is the first state president to be tried for genocide. His indictment covers three wars, between 1991 and 1998. Milosevic is not personally accused of taking part in massacres and ethnic cleansing. However, in all three indictments he is accused of individual criminal responsibility under article 7 (1) of the ICTY statutes, for having planned or ordered such acts, and of individual criminal responsibility for the acts of his subordinates, under article 7 (3) of the statutes. Had President Tudjman lived he would have almost certainly joined Milosevic in the dock. Both men sat at the apex of power in states that launched sustained campaigns of murder, terror and ethnic cleansing.

Critics charge that the ICTY tribunal is ‘victors' justice'. If so, it is tardy. Between 1991 and 1999 Milosevic was treated by the West – and Russia – as a respected international statesman, even though the UN imposed harsh economic sanctions on the Milosevic regime for its role in the Yugoslav wars. Milosevic is charged not just with war crimes in Bosnia, but with genocide. A considerable amount of the evidence on which the prosecution has constructed its case against Milosevic has been supplied, eventually, by western governments. If this is available now, it was certainly known in the mid-1990s. Yet after the war in Bosnia ended, Milosevic was flown to Dayton airbase where his name was spelt out in flashing lights.

In the macabre accounting of the Milosevic era, Kosovo was the least bloody of the regime's wars (excluding Slovenia). Perhaps two thousand people died before the air-strikes began, a mere 1 per cent of Bosnia's losses. But NATO went to war against Serbia for Kosovo, which it would not do for Croatia or Serbia. As one senior British diplomat admitted, ‘Of course we all knew Milosevic was the biggest part of the
problem right from the outset. But what took longer for us to get was that he could never ever also be part of the solution.'
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The indictment for Kosovo is forty-two pages long, plus seventeen pages listing some of the civilians killed. Among the indictment's many details is an account of the final hours of forty-four members of the Berisha family, killed by Serb forces at the Kosovo village of Suva Reka on or about 26 March 2001. The village was surrounded by tanks, and the occupants ordered out. Men were then separated from women and children, and six people immediately killed. Serb forces then herded the survivors and other family members into a coffee shop. In its dry, legalistic language, the indictment notes: ‘Forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia then walked into the coffee shop and opened fire on the persons inside. Forty civilians were killed and others seriously wounded during this action.'
¹¹
Among the members of the Berisha family killed were Eron and Redon, both aged one year old; Dorentina, aged four and Hanumasha, aged eighty-one. Bodies of the Berisha family members were later dug up at Batajnica military base.