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Milosevic's elliptical style of command is confirmed by Borisav Jovic, the last head of the joint federal presidency that ruled unified Yugoslavia from Tito's death until its breakup. He was an intimate who shared in Milosevic's decision making until mid-1992. He tells TIME that the merciless siege of Vukovar, in which Croats claim some 2,000 of their kin perished, illustrates Milosevic's method. The President made a "general decision" to "free" Yugoslav army troops in barracks "blockaded" inside predominantly Croat cities. "No siege order was issued," says Jovic; Serb troops merely went to the aid of their confreres, only to be repulsed by "Croats who managed to maintain control over our barracks for a long time."
War-crimes investigators agree Milosevic was always careful to establish plausible deniability. He was not officially commander in chief of the Yugoslav army: while some top officers personally owed him loyalty, they formally reported to a civilian panel. The real villainy, investigators say, was conducted through the Interior Ministry, home of the Serb secret police and Milosevic's inner circle of advisers. These were men who actually drew the plans for ethnic cleansing and transmitted orders to carry it out. They were spotted now and then in the war zone, under assumed names, disguised, talking to Bosnian Serb political and military officials.
These behind-the-scenes apparatchiks may be the most guilty and have the best evidence of Milosevic's personal culpability. Yet the tribunal is unlikely ever to get them to court unless one sells the others out. "The witnesses who could really convict Milosevic still work for him," says a human-rights analyst. "They owe him everything." Even then to convict the men at the top, says U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck, "you need direct evidence of their complicity in specific crimes." Leading the war is not enough.
Nothing is more galling about the post-Dayton behavior of suspected war criminals than the way some flaunt their freedom and stolen riches. Zeljko Raznatovic, who fought under the nom de guerre Arkan, is the most notorious of Serbia's paramilitary chiefs. He personally led his 200-odd Tigers through Bosnia to rape, torture and murder. Yet he has not even been indicted, and today he shows up all over Belgrade. He lives in a luxe marble mansion that he clearly did not buy out of earnings from his cafe. He is affiliated with Belgrade's biggest soccer club and appears at film premieres, in expensive restaurants, on TV talk shows. In an elaborate 1995 ceremony, where he dressed up as a royalist Serb officer, he took as his third bride the country's most popular folk singer.
No one profited more from the killing frenzy than Arkan. Since the paramilitaries from Serbia were paid mainly in what they could steal, theft provoked many atrocities. Arkan reportedly had a price list for "liberating" a town: say, 2 million to 3 million German marks ($1 million to $2 million), plus all the loot from the police station and bank, plus right of passage for 30 cars, plus everything his men could carry. The Tigers' plunder attracted "weekend warriors" from Belgrade's underworld who would pillage for profit. Arkan brags he does not consider himself a war criminal. An indictment at the Hague, he has reportedly said, would be a "compliment."