Sloboadan Milosevic Found Dead In His Cell

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Milosevic found dead in his cell

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4796470.stm

3/12/2006

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal.

The tribunal said he was found dead in his cell on Saturday morning and that although the cause was not yet clear, there was no indication of suicide.

Mr Milosevic, 64, had been on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes since 2001.

A full autopsy will now be carried out on Mr Milosvevic, who had high blood pressure and a heart condition.

Last month the tribunal rejected a request by the former president to go to Russia for medical treatment.

The tribunal has ordered an inquiry into the death.

"Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed in his cell at the United Nations detention unit," the tribunal said in a statement.

"The guard immediately alerted the detention unit officer in command and the medical officer. The latter confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead."

'Punished already'
Mr Milosevic faced charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged central role in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s.

He also faced genocide charges over the 1992-95 Bosnia war, in which 200,000 people died.

Mr Milosevic was in office for 13 years until 2000.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he hoped his death would help Serbia to come to terms with its past and allow it to look to the future.

Mothers and widows of Muslims killed in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war said they regretted that Mr Milosevic's death meant he would never face justice for the killings.

"However, it seems that God punished him already," said Hajra Catic of the Association of Srebrenica mothers.

Health problems
Mr Milosevic's brother Borislav was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying the war crimes court was "entirely responsible" for his death.

The former president had been ill for some time, and his trial was interrupted last year because of health problems.

His lawyer told BBC News 24 that Mr Milosevic would not have committed suicide because he was determined to complete his trial.

"He said to me a few weeks ago, I haven't fought this case for as long as I have with any intention to do any harm to myself," Steven Kay said.

Both the former Serbian leader's parents committed suicide.

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Milosevic died of heart failure

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4799880.stm

3/12/2006

The preliminary results of an autopsy in the Netherlands on Slobodan Milosevic show the former Yugoslav leader died of a heart attack.

He was found dead in his cell on Saturday in The Hague where he was on trial for war crimes.

A toxicological report on the body has still to be completed amid allegations he may have died of poisoning.

An official for the UN tribunal said that his remains would be released to on Monday to his family.

The tribunal said that the full autopsy report might take more than another day to be released but that the preliminary results showed Mr Milosevic had died of a "myocardial infarction", the medical term for a heart attack.

Mr Milosevic, 64, had long suffered from heart problems.

'Drug traces'
Slobodan Milosevic feared he was being poisoned just a day before he died in his cell, according to lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic.

He had complained of "strong drugs in his system only used for treating leprosy or tuberculosis" in a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Mr Milosevic had, he said, been citing a medical report from 12 January.

Mr Milosevic had requested permission to travel to Moscow for medical treatment but the tribunal refused, fearing that he might not return to The Hague.

Dutch public television NOS reported on Sunday that a blood sample taken from Mr Milosevic some time between November and January had shown traces of drugs often used to treat leprosy or tuberculosis.

They may have neutralised the medicine Mr Milosevic was taking for high blood pressure and heart problems, it said, quoting an unidentified tribunal "adviser".

UN chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte has cautioned against "rumours" and pointed out that the toxicological report could take up to 24 hours to complete.

Tribunal ploughs on
Ms del Ponte said Mr Milosevic's death made it even more urgent for Serbia to arrest the most wanted Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitives, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.

Mr Milosevic had been held at the UN war crimes tribunal since 2001.

He was on trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged central role in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s.

He also faced genocide charges over the 1992-95 Bosnia war, in which 100,000 people died.

Correspondents say the tribunal's monitoring of inmates is under scrutiny because Mr Milosevic's death came within a week of the suicide of a former rebel Croatian Serb leader, Milan Babic.

Funeral questions
Both Mr Milosevic's widow Mirjana Markovic and son Marko have blamed the tribunal for his death.

They are living in Moscow and both face fraud charges in Serbia so it is not yet clear whether Mr Milosevic's funeral will take place in his homeland.

His daughter Marija, now living in Montenegro, would also face criminal charges in Serbia.

Few Serbs lament the passing of Mr Milosevic and there is a debate about whether to accord him the honours befitting a former president, says the BBC's Matt Prodger in Belgrade.

Serbian state television led its bulletins on Sunday with the memorial service for the reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated exactly three years ago. His government sent Mr Milosevic to The Hague.

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Milosevic's blood 'bore traces of drug'
Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,,1729960,00.html?gusrc=rss)

Tests on Slobodan Milosevic's blood taken before he was found dead on Saturday showed traces of a medicine that negated the effect of high blood pressure drugs, a Dutch toxicologist said this morning.The claim emerged as Dutch prosecutors released the body of the former Serb leader for burial after an eight-hour autopsy revealed he had died of heart failure. A toxicologist's report on the body is due to be published today.

Donald Uges, a toxicologist from Groningen University, told Reuters that tests he conducted two weeks ago on Milosevic's blood showed traces of rifampicin, a drug used in treating leprosy and turberculosis that would have made other medicines ineffective.He suggested Milosevic had taken the drug in the hope the UN war crimes tribunal would agree to his requests to go to Moscow for treatment if his condition did not improve.

"I don't think he took his medicines for suicide - only for his trip to Moscow. When he was in Moscow he would be free. That is where his friends and family are. I think that was his last possibility to escape the Hague," Dr Uges told Reuters.

Milosevic, who had a heart condition and high blood pressure, was found dead in his cell on Saturday, months before a verdict was due in his trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Dr Uges told the Associated Press he had been asked to examine the sample after Milosevic's blood pressure failed to respond to medication.

The former Serbian leader was required to take his drugs under surveillance when UN-appointed doctors concluded he was not taking them. Yet still his blood pressure failed to fall.

The toxicologist said he had found traces of rifampicin, which can break down other medicines in the liver, when he examined Milosevic's blood. "[It] makes the liver extremely active. If you're taking something it breaks down very quickly," he told the Associated Press.

The Russian government today confirmed it received a letter on Sunday from Milosevic, dated Friday, which alleged he was being deliberately given the wrong drugs for his illness.

"Persons that are giving me the drug for the treatment of leprosy surely cannot be treating me," he wrote to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. "Especially those persons against whom I have defended my country in the war and who also have an interest in silencing me can likewise not be treating me."

The letter was handed to the Russian embassy in the Netherlands by Milosevic's aides on Saturday, the foreign ministry said.

"In this handwritten letter, Slobodan Milosevic speaks about an inadequate treatment conducted by doctors of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and is again asking for Russian support in getting permission for undergoing therapy at a medical facility in Moscow," the ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.

Mr Kamynin said Russian pathologists were ready to fly to The Hague to take part in additional forensic research requested by Milosevic's family, including his older brother Borislav.

Borislav Milosevic, who lives in the Russian capital, was himself taken during the night to Moscow's Bakulev clinic with a heart problem, the Interfax news agency reported. "I had some problem overnight, but it wasn't a heart attack," the agency quoted him as saying.

Milosevic's lawyer today called for the 64-year-old's funeral to be held in Belgrade and said Milosevic's son Marko would come to The Hague today or tomorrow to pick up the body.

[Partridge]

I don't buy into this media hysteria/demonisation of Milosevic. For sure, he was a ruthless political leader. But he was hardly the bastard child of Hitler, Stalin, Satan and Vlad the Impaler that the media is making him out to be - and has been portraying him since the West began its proxy-assaults on Yugoslavia and then open assault on Serbia. I've been reading and watching news about this (it's basically inescapable), and some of the 'reporting' is truly outrageous.

Apparently Milosevic simultaniously 'facilitated the breakup of Yugoslavia' while 'he engaged in ethnic cleansing' to 'build a greater Serbia'. Who facilitated the violent breakup of Yugoslavia which - after years of peace, if not political freedom, under Marshall Tito who's Partisans beat the fascists in WWII - has now become a hotbed of ethnic hatred and a collection of little rightwing republics who kow-tow to the West. Was it Milosevic, who fought the break-up of Yugoslavia? Or perhaps it was guerrillas and political movements funded, trained and entirely supported by the West? Among these we include the Kosovar Liberation Army, which was trained by the British SAS and funded by... fundamentalist muslim organisations!

Undoubtedly war crimes were committed during these turbulent years - committed by ALL sides, including NATO. Funny that we don't see Gen. Wesley Clarke on trial in the Hague for the bombing of Serbian State TV offices. If you ask me, Milosevic's real crime (in the eyes of the West) was not ethnic cleansing, political and financial corruption or Serbian nationalism - his crime was economic nationalism, refusing to 'liberalise' the Serbian economy while virtually every other ex-'Communist' state was opening itself up to Western interests (and seeing a dramatic fall in living standards and employment in the process).

It's interesting to note that Yugoslavia was tolerated for years by the West when it was an Independent communist state (that is, independent from the Warsaw Pact) - Western money was even pumped into the country. Once the Eastern Bloc fell (or was pushed), Yugoslavia no longer served any kind of purpose for the West.

Anyway, here's a surprising(?) defence of Milosevic from the right, Paul Craig Roberts writes in Counterpunch:

On March 11, the former Serbian leader and president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, died in his prison cell at the Hague, where he had been on trial for four years and one month for war crimes and genocide. The Serbian Socialist Party leader Zoran Andelkovic responded to the news of Milosevic's death with the following statement:

"Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Socialist Party of Serbia and a former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia was murdered today at the Tribunal in Hague. The decision of the Tribunal to disallow Milosevic's medical treatment at the Bakunin Institute in Moscow represents a prescribed death sentence against Milosevic. Truth and justice were on his side and this is why they have used a strategy of gradual killing of Slobodan Milsosevic. The responsibility for his death is clearly with the Hague Tribunal."

A partisan accusation or the truth? Milosevic was known to be seriously ill. The Russian government promised to return Milosevic to the Tribunal after treatment. The Tribunal refused. It is easy to conclude that the case against Milosevic had collapsed and that an embarrassed US government, NATO authorities, and Hague Tribunal decided to let him die in his cell rather than admit that his guilt could not be proven even after a trial lasting four years and one month.

Milosevic was caught up in the post-Soviet era break-up of Yugoslavia. Nationalist forces broke up the Yugoslav federation. During 1991-92, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia. Large Serbian minorities in Croatia and in Bosnia objected and claimed the identical right of self-determination to remain in the federation as Croats and Muslims claimed to leave it. Croatian and Bosnian Serbs organized and a war against secession began.

Milosevic could hardly remain a Serbian leader and not support the Serbs. Abraham Lincoln was canonized for invading the South to prevent its secession, but Milosevic was damned for trying to protect Yugoslavia's territorial integrity. In the end Milosevic accepted secession. In 1995 Milosevic negotiated the Dayton Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia. According to the encyclopedia, Wikipedia, "Milosevic was credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan peace."

In 1998 Milosevic was confronted with a more severe problem. Armed actions by the separatist Kosovar Liberation Army, listed as a terrorist organization by the US Department of State, in the ancient Serbian province of Kosovo broke out into warfare. Milosevic was now trying to hold on to a province not of Yugoslavia but of Serbia itself, a province that had been colonized by ethnic Albanians. The Serbian population in Kosovo was outnumbered nine to one and suffered greatly at the hands of the KLA.

Milosevic, already damaged by the wars of secession that destroyed Yugoslavia, lost the media campaign waged by public relations firms hired by contending factions that spun the news that Americans received. Milosevic was demonized, and the Clinton administration had Serbia bombed by NATO forces for 78 days in the spring of 1999. Many Serbian civilians were killed by the air strikes which hit passenger trains and destroyed the Chinese embassy. In effect, the US interfered in Serbian affairs in behalf of the secession, with the result that Kosovo has been essentially ethnically cleansed of Serbs. Kosovo is apparently still considered to be a part of Serbia, but it is administered by the United Nations. Somehow, this has been presented as a great moral victory for humanity.

If the massive propaganda campaign against Milosevic had many facts behind it, he long ago would have been convicted at the Hague. What was the episode all about?

In my opinion, it was to establish the precedent, later to be employed in the Middle East, that the US government could demonize a head of state geographically distant from any legitimate "sphere of influence" and use military force to remove him. This is precisely the fate of Saddam Hussein, and the Bush regime still hopes to repeat the strategy in Iran and Syria.

The unanswered question is why does the "international community" go along with it? The numerous civilians killed by US interventions are just as dead as the ones killed by heads of state attempting to hold on to their countries. Why are the latter deaths war crimes but not the former?

As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush criticized President Clinton's intervention in Serbia and disavowed the international policeman role for the US. But as soon as Bush got in office, he plotted to invade Iraq. Why?

Americans should be very concerned that Bush still has not come clean about why he invaded Iraq. Americans should be disturbed that despite the disastrous results in Iraq, Bush still intends "regime change" in Iran and Syria.