Will Milosevic Get His?

ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP
He stood defiant in a January court hearing

When case it-02-54 is finally heard at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague this week, it will mark a moment many despaired would never come. The Serb strongman and former President of Yugoslavia who presided over a decade of mass murder and mayhem across the Balkans seemed untouchable for so long, and then became almost forgotten as the world's attention fixed on a new global villain. Yet Slobodan Milosevic will now have to sit each day in a well-lit U.N. courtroom, flanked by two guards, to answer to charges of crimes against humanity--even if he does remain as defiant as ever.

Normal trials follow a prescribed, orderly path. But no one knows what to expect in this one on the last great crimes of the 20th century--a test case for international justice, the first trial of a head of state. The prosecution must convict Milosevic not just in the eyes of three sitting judges but in the court of world opinion. Yet never has the Hague tried a defendant so uncooperative. Milosevic seems determined to make the proceedings a spectacle of courtroom subversion, refusing to recognize the tribunal, refusing to enter a plea, refusing to select defense lawyers, refusing even to wear headphones to hear the proceedings in Serbian.

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In every pretrial appearance, Milosevic has responded with political diatribes. He has labeled the charges against him "absurd" and "monstrous," the prosecutor a NATO mouthpiece, the court a "retarded 7-year-old." He has called himself a peacemaker who is on trial to cover up NATO aggression against a sovereign country. The rants have led the presiding judge, Richard May, to cut off Milosevic's microphone. Milosevic has dropped hints that he might stage a grand scene by calling a parade of Western leaders to testify, starting with former President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It will be up to the three judges, who also constitute the jury--Britain's brisk, outspoken May, Jamaica's scholarly Patrick Robinson and South Korea's quiet O-Gon Kwon--to make sure the whole thing doesn't descend into farce.

The Charges
It's worth remembering that for all his destructive desires, Osama bin Laden hasn't accomplished crimes anywhere near as dastardly as those of which Milosevic is accused. From Sept. 21, 1991, when Serb paramilitary shot 11 Croat civilians in Dalj and buried their bodies in a mass grave, to May 25, 1999, when, during the forced evacuation of the Kosovo village of Dubrava, Serb forces killed eight ethnic Albanians, the former President is charged with responsibility for crimes that resulted in the deaths of 300,000 non-Serbs and the expulsion of millions from their homelands.

In the legal terms of the three indictments, that adds up to 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the rules of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention during the decade of wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In common parlance, the 159 pages of charges catalog a shattering litany of persecution, extermination, murder, torture, inhumane acts, wanton destruction, deportation and forcible transfer. The indictments accuse Milosevic, as the "dominant political figure" in Serbia, of orchestrating a "joint criminal enterprise" to cleanse non-Serbs from vast swaths of territory to leave an ethnically pure nation.

There is only one formal count of genocide--in Bosnia: it's the gravest offense on the war-crimes books but the hardest to prove. Prosecutors must show that Milosevic knowingly intended to wipe out ethnic or religious groups--Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. "Unless you've got an accused saying, 'Yes, I had the intent, and I had the ability to do it,'" says deputy prosecutor Graham Blewitt, "you can only submit evidence that will enable the judges to infer that's what was in the accused's mind." Most of the charges fit under the less demanding "crimes against humanity" statutes. The maximum sentence is the same for all the charges: life in prison.

Originally, the jurists in Trial Chamber III wanted to try Milosevic first on the Kosovo campaign and later for Bosnia and Croatia. But an appeals court two weeks ago accepted chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's argument that all three were part of "one strategy, one scheme" and that witnesses, once revealed, might be intimidated not to appear again. So there will be one trial, expected to conclude within two years.

The Prosecutors' Strategy
They have a lot going for them. The tribunal's acquittal rate so far is very low. Years of investigation have turned up hundreds of witnesses and loads of exhibits that go far beyond circumstantial constructs. Investigators were able to fish for more after Milosevic's regime fell in October 2000 and the new government let them inside Yugoslavia for the first time. Though the investigators complain they got more obstruction than cooperation, especially from the military, no one could cover up one incriminating new find: the bodies of Kosovo Albanian victims listed in one indictment were unearthed in mass graves near Belgrade last year.