Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia (Serbia)
Slobodan Milosevic was born August 20, 1941 at Pozarevac, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) and died March 11, 2006 in Scheveningen, Netherlands .
He was President of Serbia from May 1989 to October 2000 and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from July 1997 to October 2000. During these periods occurred the wars of Yugoslavia, which ended the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was charged with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
He died during the fifth year of its trial of a myocardial infarction and was buried March 18, 2006 in Pozarevac in Serbia.
Personal life
Slobodan Milosevic, the son of Svetozar Milosevic, Montenegrin Orthodox priest and a teacher. He married Mirjana Markovic in 1965 when they were both at the University of Belgrade. They had two children, Marko and Marija.
Early political career
He joined in 1959 the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. In 1964 he completed his law studies at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, and worked first in the industry (state-owned gas TECHNOGAZ), then in finance where he held until 1983, according to Director of Beogradska banka (Beobanka, Bank of Belgrade).
While Slobodan Milosevic appears as a man introverted temperament, poor speaker and not particularly charismatic, he became in 1984 Head of Section of the Belgrade Communist Party. His political career began leading in 1986 when he replaced Ivan Stambolic head of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia. He was reelected in 1988. In May 1989 he was elected President of Serbia and advance his ideas advocating ethnic nationalism. It is not in Kosovo and supersedes all previous measures taken for autonomy. The current of communism is failing in all the countries of Eastern Europe, he transformed in 1989 into the Communist Party Socialist Party. He also chairs the change of constitution which gives the president more power. In contrast, some voices are beginning to speak out against the nationalist threat (Belgrade Circle), but December 20, 1992, he was reelected to the presidency, this time by direct universal suffrage.
Wars in Yugoslavia
On June 25, 1991, Croatia and Slovenia, "independent and sovereign states" under the Yugoslav Constitution of February 21, 1974, said they no longer adhere to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, where the dissolution of the federation have been found in January 1992, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina refuse to join the union of Serbia and Montenegro that Milosevic was incorporated in April 1992 under the name "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia".
Milosevic then proceeds to alter by force the borders of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, under the pretext of minority Serb immigrant from the fifteenth century in Croatia and Bosnia and not treated, these boundaries were finally fixed in 1945 but dating essentially over two centuries, and the 1974 Constitution states that it is "within the republics and autonomous provinces" that "peoples and nationalities" exercise their "sovereign rights".
Milosevic is launching two successive wars of territorial conquest and extermination of their non-Serb populations: one in the summer of 1991 against the state of Croatia under the mask of a Yugoslav federal army which he had usurped the command, the second in March 1992 against the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina behind the false face of a "local uprising" of the Serbs against the legal government.
The war in Croatia ended in victory for the Croatian army in August 1995, which allows to conclude the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Dayton Accords of December 1995.
From February 1998, Milosevic began a series of massacres in Kosovo (in Qirez, Likoshan, etc..) In order to provoke a revolt of the population, Albanians 88%, and so neutralize its opposition under the guise of patriotic urgency. Indeed, after the Dayton Accords, the population of Serbia asks accounts and vote against him: his party lost the elections of November 1996, and the opposition should show day and night until February 1997 that he eventually recognize the true results. In July 1997, Milosevic was nevertheless elected to the presidency of the "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).
The Serb massacres in Kosovo who, under color of cons-insurgency have been 2000 civilian deaths and 300 000 refugees, eventually persuading Western leaders, after eight years of his violence, that military action against Milosevic is necessary. On March 24, 1999, NATO ordered against the Russian opposition to the Security Council of UN air strikes against the FRY. The strikes forced Milosevic to sign the agreements from Kumanovo of June 10, 1999, when he agrees to withdraw its troops. The same day the Security Council of the United Nations passed Resolution 1244, which provides for an interim administration of the UN (UNMIK) and military presence led by NATO (KFOR).
Before the International Tribunal
That same year he was indicted before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
In September 2000, he was defeated in the presidential election by Vojislav Kostunica government and his regime was overthrown in October 2000. Under pressure from a U.S. ultimatum fixing the March 31 deadline requiring the arrest of Slobodan Milošević on pain of economic sanctions, the Serbian Justice summoned to surrender. Special forces police storm March 31, 2001 but the bodyguards and supporters of former Serbian president come to resist. And only after a siege lasting 33 hours, held by the police, he surrendered to authorities. He was arrested on 1 April 2001 for abuse of power and corruption and is delivered to the United Nations by the Serbian government in June 2001. His trial, which began February 12, 2002, does appear before the ICTY for crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of laws or customs of war. The French lawyer Jacques Verges Master who had offered his services, was not retained as counsel by the accused.
In February 2007, the ICTY ruled Serbia not guilty of genocide and concludes that the Belgrade government had not planned the massacre of Srebrenica (the most serious episode in the indictment). However the President of the ICTY said that Milosevic was aware of the risk of occurrence of massacres in Bosnia and did nothing to prevent them.
Doubts about the circumstances of his death
The health status of Milosevic marks the end of the trial. Repeated requests for Milosevic to be treated in Russia are rejected by the court, although the health of the accused, who provides his own defense, render difficult the continuation of the trial.
Milosevic died in detention center in Scheveningen United Nations, March 11, 2006, before the end of his trial. The first ads that suggest his death is natural. He suffered from heart problems and hypertension. However, a full autopsy and toxicology tests have been requested to ascertain the cause of his death. He had said in February his lawyers feared poisoning.
His legal counsel, which showed a six-page document said that former President wrote a letter before his death in which he said that traces of a "powerful drug" for treatment leprosy or tuberculosis had been detected in his blood in January. He claimed to be very concerned and afraid that we are trying to poison him.
According to the results of the autopsy report released March 12 in the evening, Slobodan Milosevic died of a myocardial infarction. On 17 March the ICTY definitely excludes the idea of poisoning in a new report saying that no toxicology tests poison, drug or foreign substance capable of causing death has been solved.
After it was proposed to hold his funeral in Russia or in Belgrade, which has aroused some controversy, Milosevic was finally buried March 18 in his hometown of Pozarevac without national honor, but in the presence of more than 50 000 supporters and many political and cultural Western (NATO opponents) who have always supported.
The former chief of Serbian secret service, Jovica Stanisic, worked for seven years for the CIA, he would be heavily involved in the fall of Milosevic.
Read also Joseph Staline
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