Milosevic Is Dead

Milosevic Is Dead

PRAGUE, March 11, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has confirmed that the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died in its detention center in The Hague.

News of his death was broken by the independent Belgrade-based radio station B-92 at 12:58 p.m. Central European Time.

He died of natural courses.

Slobodan Milosevic dominated Balkan politics throughout the 1990s, and since February 2002, he has been on trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the 11 years of his rule.

Just six years after he became president of Yugoslavia, in May 1989, Milosevic was instrumental in initiating, continuing, or guiding conflicts in Croatia (1991) and Bosnia (1992). Many thousands died, over 8,000 of them on the site of the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, at Srebrenica. Those wars ended when the Dayton peace agreement was signed in 1995, and for a time it seemed he might be overthrown.

But he survived to win reelection in July 1997. Then, as a rebellion flared up in the predominantly ethnic-Albanian province of Kosovo, he launched a brutal crackdown. The international community reacted swiftly with sanctions and air strikes aimed at Serbia. As a result, the domestic repercussions were greater: in October 2000, Milosevic was overthrown in a revolution.

Milosevic became a test case for an international justice system eager to hold accountable some of those guilty of genocide in the Balkans and in Rwanda, but it was only in March 2001 that the new Serbian government allowed him to be brought to court. Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In Serbia, he was also suspected of the murder of many of his critics, including that of Ivan Stambolic, his one-time mentor and Serbian president.

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Milosevic Is Dead