Slobodan Milošević

Early life

Milošević had ancestral roots from the Lijeva Rijeka village in Podgorica and was of the Vasojevići clan from Montenegro. He was born in Požarevac, four months after the Axis invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and raised during the Axis occupation of World War II. He had an older brother Borislav who would later become a diplomat. His parents separated in the aftermath of the war. His father, the Serbian Orthodox theologian Svetozar Milošević, died by suicide in 1962. Svetozar's father Simeun was an officer in the Montenegrin Army. Milošević's mother Stanislava (née Koljenšić), a school teacher and also an active member of the Communist Party, died by suicide in 1972. Her brother (Milošević's maternal uncle) Milisav Koljenšić was a major-general in the Yugoslav People's Army who died by suicide in 1963.

Milošević went on to study law at the University of Belgrade's Law School, where he became the head of the ideology committee of the Yugoslav Communist League's (SKJ) League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia (SSOJ). While at the university, he befriended Ivan Stambolić, whose uncle Petar Stambolić had been a president of the Serbian Executive Council (the Communist equivalent of a prime minister). This was to prove a crucial connection for Milošević's career prospects, as the two climbed through the SKJ hierarchy.

After his graduation in 1964, Milošević became an economic advisor to the mayor of Belgrade Branko Pešić. In 1965, he married his childhood friend Mirjana Marković with whom he had two children: Marko and Marija. Marković would have some influence on Milošević's political career both before and after his rise to power; she was also leader of her husband's junior coalition partner, Yugoslav Left (JUL) in the 1990s. In 1968, Milošević got a job at the Tehnogas company, where Stambolić was working, and became its chairman in 1973. By 1978, Stambolić's sponsorship had enabled Milošević to become the head of Beobanka, one of Yugoslavia's largest banks; this allowed him frequent trips to Paris and New York.

Rise to power

On 16 April 1984, Milošević was elected president of the Belgrade League of Communists City Committee. On 21 February 1986, the Socialist Alliance of Working People unanimously supported him as presidential candidate for the SKJ's Serbian branch Central Committee. Milošević was elected by a majority vote at the 10th Congress of the Serbian League of Communists on 28 May 1986.

Milošević emerged in 1987 as a force in Serbian politics after he declared support for Serbs in the Serbian Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, who claimed they were being oppressed by the provincial government which was dominated by Kosovo's majority ethnic group, ethnic Albanians. Milošević claimed that ethnic Albanian authorities had abused their powers, that the autonomy of Kosovo was allowing the entrenchment of separatism in Kosovo, and that the rights of the Serbs in the province were being regularly violated. As a solution, he called for political change to reduce the autonomy, protect minority Serb rights, and initiate a strong crackdown on separatism in Kosovo.

Milošević was criticized by opponents, who claimed he and his allies were attempting to strengthen the position of Serbs in Yugoslavia at the expense of Kosovo Albanians and other nationalities, a policy they accused of being nationalist, which was a taboo in the Yugoslav Communist system and effectively a political crime, as nationalism was identified as a violation of the Yugoslav Communists' commitment to Brotherhood and Unity. Milošević always denied allegations that he was a nationalist or that he exploited Serbian nationalism in his rise to power. In a 1995 interview with TIME, he defended himself from these accusations by claiming he stood for every nationality in Yugoslavia: "All my speeches up to '89 were published in my book. You can see that there was no nationalism in those speeches. We were explaining why we think it is good to preserve Yugoslavia for all Serbs, all Croats, all Muslims and all Slovenians as our joint country. Nothing else." Nevertheless, Milošević was described as a left-wing nationalist.

As animosity between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo deepened during the 1980s, Milošević was sent to address a crowd of Serbs at the historic Kosovo field on 24 April 1987. While Milošević was talking to the leadership inside the local cultural hall, demonstrators outside clashed with the local Kosovo-Albanian police force. The New York Times reported that "a crowd of 15,000 Serbs and Montenegrins hurled stones at the police after they used truncheons to push people away from the entrance to the cultural center of Kosovo Polje."

Anti-bureaucratic revolution

Starting in 1988, the anti-bureaucratic revolution led to the resignation of the governments of Vojvodina and Montenegro and to the election of officials allied with Milošević. According to the ICTY indictment against Milošević: "From July 1988 to March 1989, a series of demonstrations and rallies supportive of Slobodan Milošević's policies – the 'Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution' – took place in Vojvodina and Montenegro. These protests led to the ousting of the respective provincial and republican governments; the new governments were then supportive of, and indebted to, Slobodan Milošević."

Milošević's supporters say the anti-bureaucratic revolution was an authentic grass-roots political movement. Reacting to the indictment, Dr. Branko Kostić, Montenegro's then-representative on the Presidency of Yugoslavia said, "Well, it sounds like nonsense to me. If a government or a leadership were supportive of Milošević, then it would be normal for him to feel indebted to them, not the other way around." He said Milošević enjoyed genuine grassroots support because "his name at that time shone brightly on the political arena of the entire federal Yugoslavia ... and many people saw him as a person who would be finally able to make things move, to get things going." Kosta Bulatović, an organizer of the anti-bureaucratic rallies, said "All of this was spontaneous"; the motivation to protest was "coming from the grassroots."

Milošević's critics claim that he cynically planned and organized the anti-bureaucratic revolution to strengthen his political power. Stjepan Mesić, who served as the last president of a united Yugoslavia (in the prelude of these events), said that Milošević, "with the policy he waged, broke down the autonomous [government in] Vojvodina, which was legally elected, [and] in Montenegro he implemented an anti-bureaucratic revolution, as it's called, by which he destroyed Yugoslavia." Commenting on Milošević's role, Slovene president Milan Kučan said, "none of us believed in Slovenia that these were spontaneous meetings and rallies." He accused the Serbian government of deliberately fanning nationalist passions, and Slovene newspapers published articles comparing Milošević to Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, a one-time socialist who turned to nationalism. Milošević contended that such criticism was unfounded and amounted to "spreading fear of Serbia".

In Vojvodina, where 54 percent of the population was Serb, an estimated 100,000 demonstrators rallied outside the Communist Party headquarters in Novi Sad on 6 October 1988 to demand the resignation of the provincial leadership. The majority of protesters were workers from the town of Bačka Palanka, 40 kilometres west of Novi Sad. They were supportive of Milošević and opposed the provincial government's moves to block forthcoming amendments to the Serbian constitution. The New York Times reported that the demonstrations were held "with the support of Slobodan Milošević" and that "Diplomats and Yugoslavs speculated about whether Mr. Milošević, whose hold over crowds [was] great, had had a hand in organizing the Novi Sad demonstrations." The demonstrations were successful. The provincial leadership resigned, and the League of Communists of Vojvodina elected a new leadership. In the elections that followed Dr. Dragutin Zelenović, a Milošević ally, was elected member of the SFRY Presidency from Vojvodina.

Constitutional amendments

Beginning in 1982 and 1983, in response to nationalist Albanian riots in Kosovo, the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia adopted a set of conclusions aimed at centralizing Serbia's control over law enforcement and the judiciary in its Kosovo and Vojvodina provinces.

In the early to mid-1980s, claims were made of a mass exodus of Serbs and Montenegrins from Kosovo as a result of Albanian riots. Serbian nationalists denounced the 1974 Yugoslav constitution and demands for change were strong among Kosovo Serbs. In 1986, Serbian President Ivan Stambolić responded by accepting this position, declaring that the 1974 constitution was contrary to the interests of Serbs, though he warned that "certain individuals" were "coquetting" with Serbian nationalism. Stambolić established a commission to amend the Serbian constitution in keeping with conclusions adopted by the federal Communist Party.

The constitutional commission worked for three years to harmonize its positions and in 1989 an amended Serbian constitution was submitted to the governments of Kosovo, Vojvodina and Serbia for approval. On 10 March 1989, the Vojvodina Assembly approved the amendments, followed by the Kosovo Assembly on 23 March, and the Serbian Assembly on 28 March.

In the Kosovo Assembly 187 of the 190 assembly members were present when the vote was taken: 10 voted against the amendments, two abstained, and the remaining 175 voted in favor of the amendments. Although the ethnic composition of the Kosovo Assembly was over 70 percent Albanian, they were forced to vote in favor of the amendments while under the careful watch of the newly arrived Serbian police forces. Unrest began when amendments were approved restoring Serbian control over the province's police, courts, national defence and foreign affairs. According to a United Press International report, rioting killed 29 people and injured 30 policemen and 97 civilians.

In the wake of the unrest following the 1989 constitutional amendments, ethnic Albanians in Kosovo largely boycotted the provincial government and refused to vote in the elections. Azem Vllasi, leader of the League of Communists of Kosovo, was arrested for inciting rioting amid the 1989 strike by Kosovo-Albanian miners. In the wake of the Albanian boycott, supporters of Slobodan Milošević were elected to positions of authority by the remaining Serbian voters in Kosovo. The boycott soon included education on Albanian language in Kosovo which Milošević attempted to resolve by signing the Milošević-Rugova education agreement in 1996.

Economic policies

Milošević's advocated a synthesis of socialist and liberal economic policies that would gradually transition Serbia from a planned economy to a mixed economy. During the first democratic election in Serbia, Milošević promised to protect industrial workers from the adverse effects of free market policies by maintaining social ownership of the economy and supporting trade barriers in order to protect local industries. Despite this, many accused Milošević of creating a kleptocracy by transferring ownership much of the industrial and financial sector to his political allies and financiers. Under heavy economic sanctions from the United Nations due to Milošević's perceived role in the Yugoslav wars, Serbia's economy began a prolonged period of economic collapse and isolation. The National Bank of Yugoslavia's war-related easy money policies contributed to hyperinflation which reached an alarming rate of 313 million percent in January 1994. According to the World Bank, Serbia's economy contracted by 27.2 and 30.5 percent in 1992 and 1993 respectively. In response to the deteriorating situation, World Bank economist Dragoslav Avramović was nominated the governor of the National Bank of the FR Yugoslavia in March 1994. Avramović began monetary reforms that ended hyperinflation and returned the Serbian economy to economic growth by giving the Yugoslav dinar a 1:1 parity with the Deutsche Mark. Milošević's role in the signing of the Dayton Accords allowed the lifting of most economic sanctions, but the FR Yugoslavia was still not allowed access to financial and foreign aid due to the perceived oppression of Albanians in Kosovo. The Serbian economy began growing from the period of 1994–1998, at one point even reaching a growth rate of 10.1 percent in 1997. However, this growth rate was insufficient to return Serbia to its pre-war economic status. In order to pay out pensions and wages, Milošević's socialist government had no choice but to begin selling off Serbia's most profitable telecommunications, which gave the federal government about $1.05 billion more in revenue. In 1998, Miloševic promised to introduce a new economic program which would begin a process of market reforms, reduction of trade barriers, and the privatization of more state owned enterprises in order to achieve an economic growth rate of 10%. However, this plan was never implemented due to the Kosovo war, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and his subsequent overthrow in October 2000.

Civil and political rights under Milošević

Milošević's government policies on civil and political rights when serving as Serbian President and later Yugoslav president were controversial.

Milošević's government exercised influence and censorship in the media. An example was in March 1991, when Serbia's Public Prosecutor ordered a 36-hour blackout of two independent media stations, B92 Radio and Studio B television to prevent the broadcast of a demonstration against the Serbian government taking place in Belgrade. The two media stations appealed to the Public Prosecutor against the ban but the Public Prosecutor failed to respond.

Upon the creation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Milošević's government engaged in reforms to the Serbian penal code regarding restrictions on free speech, which were seen by critics as highly authoritarian. In particular Article 98 of the Serbian penal code during the 1990s punished imprisonment of up to three years for the following:

...public ridicule [of] the Republic of Serbia or another Republic within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, their flag, coat of arms or anthem, their presidencies, assemblies or executive councils, the president of the executive council in connection with the performance of their office..."

The federal criminal code for Yugoslavia also protected the presidents of federal institutions, the Yugoslav Army and federal emblems. Both the Serbian and federal Yugoslav laws granted limited exemptions to journalists. The result was multiple charges against a variety of people opposed to the policies of the Serbian and Yugoslav governments even including a Serbian cartoonist who designed political satire.

Rule and role in the Yugoslav Wars

The Hague indictment alleges that, starting in 1987, Milošević "endorsed a Serbian nationalist agenda" and "exploited a growing wave of Serbian nationalism in order to strengthen centralised rule in the SFRY". ICTY prosecutors argued that "the (Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo) indictments were all part of a common scheme, strategy or plan on the part of the accused Milošević to create a Greater Serbia, a centralized Serbian state encompassing the Serb-populated areas of Croatia and Bosnia and all of Kosovo, and that this plan was to be achieved by forcibly removing non-Serbs from large geographical areas through the commission of the crimes charged in the indictments. Although the events in Kosovo were separated from those in Croatia and Bosnia by more than three years, they were no more than a continuation of that plan, and they could only be understood completely by reference to what had happened in Croatia and Bosnia." Milošević's defenders claim that the Prosecution could not produce a single order issued by his government to Serbian fighters in Croatia or Bosnia. Near the end of the Prosecution's case, a Prosecution analyst admitted under cross-examination that this was indeed the case. Reynaud Theunens, however, was quick to point out, "the fact that we don't have orders doesn't mean that they don't exist" to which Milošević replied "There are none, that's why you haven't got one."

Milošević's political behavior has been analyzed as politically opportunist in nature. Claims that Milošević was principally motivated by a desire for power have been supported by many people who knew or worked for him. Some believe his original goal until the breakup of Yugoslavia was to take control of Yugoslavia, with the ambition of becoming its next great leader, a "second Tito". According to this, Milošević exploited nationalism as a tool to seize power in Serbia, while not holding any particular commitment to it. During the first twenty-five years of his political career in the communist government of Yugoslavia, Milošević was a typical civil servant who did not appear to have nationalist aims. Later, he attempted to present himself as a peacemaker in the Yugoslav Wars and abandoned support of nationalism. He returned to support nationalism during the Kosovo War and appealed to anti-imperialist sentiments. The spread of violent nationalism has also been imputed to indifference to it by Milošević.

The source of Milošević's nationalistic agenda is believed to have been influenced by the policies of the popular prominent Serbian Communist official and former Yugoslav Partisan Aleksandar Ranković who was known to promote Serbian national interests in Yugoslavia and tougher police actions against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. He supported a centralized Yugoslavia and opposed efforts that promoted decentralization that he deemed to be against the interests of Serb unity. Ranković imposed harsh repressive measures on Kosovo Albanians based on accusations that they were sympathizers of the Stalinist rule of Enver Hoxha in Albania. In 1956, a show trial in Pristina was held in which multiple Albanian Communists of Kosovo were convicted of being infiltrators from Albania and were given long prison sentences. Ranković sought to secure the position of the Serbs in Kosovo and gave them dominance in Kosovo's nomenklatura. Under Ranković's influence, Islam in Kosovo at this time was repressed and both Albanians and ethnically Slavic Muslims were encouraged to declare themselves to be Turkish and emigrate to Turkey. At the same time, Serbs and Montenegrins dominated the government, security forces, and industrial employment in Kosovo. The popularity of Ranković's nationalistic policies in Serbia became apparent during his funeral in Serbia in 1983 where large numbers of people attended while considering Ranković a Serbian "national" leader. This event is believed to have possibly influenced Milošević, who attended Ranković's funeral, to recognize the popularity of Ranković's agenda. This connection to the legacy of Ranković was recognized by a number of Yugoslavs who regarded Milošević's policies upon his rise to power in Serbia as effectively "bringing Ranković back in".

Personal views

A large number of Slobodan Milošević's interviews have been collected online by his supporters. Milošević argued that the Yugoslav Constitution gave self-determination to constitutive nations, not to republics and Serbs were constitutive nation in both the Socialistic Republic of Croatia and the Socialistic Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On this basis, he stated that the Croatian Serbs and later the Bosnian Serbs should not have been subject to the declarations of independence by the Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Milošević denied that Serbia was at war, even though Serbia's military involvement was evident during the wars in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia in particular. Milošević was President of Serbia, not of Yugoslavia, and claimed that his government was only indirectly involved through support for Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia at some points. Others including former members of his cabinet such as Borisav Jović have admitted that Milošević, while not head of state of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, in fact played a key role in the military affairs taken in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. This included a scheme discussed and designed by both Jović and Milošević that transferred every Bosnian Serb unit from the Yugoslav army (JNA) to the newly formed Bosnian Serb army upon Bosnia's separation from Yugoslavia, which meant that Yugoslavia could not be criticized for occupying parts of Bosnia as it was officially a civil war, although Jović admitted that the Bosnian Serb Army was fully funded by Belgrade because the Bosnian Serb military budget was too small to support such an army.

Milošević spent most of 1988 and 1989 focusing his politics on the "Kosovo problem". In Kosovo, to seem non-contradictory, Milošević alleged that he supported the right of the Albanians to "self-determination", but not to independence, as he claimed that Kosovo was an essential part of Serbia due to its history and its numerous churches and cultural relics. He also claimed that the KLA were a neo-Nazi organisation that sought an ethnically pure Kosovo, and he argued that independence would deliver Kosovo to their hands. Milošević denied that he gave orders to massacre Albanians in 1998. He claimed that the deaths were sporadic events confined to rural areas of West Kosovo committed by paramilitaries and by rebels in the armed forces. Those from the Serbian army or police who were involved were all, he claimed, arrested and many were given long prison sentences.

The former United States ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann, during his conversations with Milošević, claimed that he was not a genuine nationalist, but rather a political opportunist. Zimmerman has claimed that unlike other politicians with whom he had discussions during the collapse of Yugoslavia, such as Franjo Tuđman and Radovan Karadžić, Milošević did not emphasize any hatred of ethnic groups and instead emphasized that Serbia would continue to be a multi-ethnic republic in Yugoslavia. Zimmerman has claimed that Milošević opportunistically used nationalism to allow him to rise to power in the Communist establishment in Serbia as Communism in eastern Europe became increasingly unpopular, and continued to advocate a nationalist agenda to draw in support for his government. On another occasion, however, Milošević revealed to Zimmerman his negative attitude towards ethnic Albanians who had demanded autonomy, and in the 1990s, independence from Serbia and Yugoslavia. Milošević told Zimmerman jokingly that the Albanians of Kosovo were the most pampered minority in Europe. Milošević also was known to talk disparagingly about Slovenes, when he in conversation with an interviewer of what he thought of the Slovene delegation's decision to depart the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, Milošević made a derogatory joke, calling the League of Communists of Slovenia delegation, "those stingy Slovenes". Zimmerman later reported that Milošević's unusual and conflicting positions and mannerisms were almost schizophrenic in nature, as at times Milošević would behave in an arrogant, stubborn, authoritarian and aggressive manner towards others, which staunchly supported Serbian nationalism against all opponents, while at other times he would be polite, conciliatory, and be eager and willing to find moderate and peaceful solutions to the crisis in Yugoslavia. Zimmerman has concluded, however, that Milošević constantly demonstrated that he primarily saw Yugoslavia as a state for ensuring the unity of Serbs, and did not have much interest in preserving the unity of Yugoslavia outside areas of Serb national interests.

Murders of political opponents

In the summer of 2000, former Serbian President Ivan Stambolić was kidnapped; his body was found in 2003 and Milošević was charged with ordering his murder. In 2005, several members of the Serbian secret police and criminal gangs were convicted in Belgrade for a number of murders, including Stambolić's. These were the same people who arrested Milošević in April 2001. In June 2006, the Supreme Court of Serbia ruled that Milošević had ordered the murder of Stambolić, accepting the previous ruling of the Special Court for Organized Crime in Belgrade, which targeted Milošević as the main abettor of politically motivated murders in the 1990s. Milošević's attorneys said the Court's ruling was of little value because he was never formally charged or given an opportunity to defend himself against the accusations. Moreover, most of these murders were of government officials, such as high police official Radovan Stojičić, Defence Minister Pavle Bulatović, and the director of Jat Airways Žika Petrović.

Downfall

On 4 February 1997, Milošević recognized the opposition victories in some local elections, after mass protests lasting 96 days. Constitutionally limited to two terms as President of Serbia, on 23 July 1997, Milošević assumed the presidency of the Federation, though it had been understood he had held the real power for some time before then.

Serbian police and military counter-action against the pro-Albanian separatist Kosovo Liberation Army in Serbia's previously autonomous province of Kosovo culminated in escalating armed conflict in 1998 and NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia between March and June 1999, ending in full withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from the province and deployment of international civil and security forces. Milošević was indicted on 24 May 1999 for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo, and he was standing trial, up until his death, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He asserted that the trial was illegal, having been established in contravention of the UN Charter.

Ironically, Milošević lost his grip on power when he lost elections that he scheduled prematurely (that is, before the end of his mandate) and that he did not even need to win in order to retain power, which was centered in the parliaments that his party and its associates controlled. In the five-man presidential race held on 24 September 2000, Milošević was defeated in the first round by opposition leader Vojislav Koštunica, who won slightly more than 50% of the vote. Milošević initially refused to acquiesce, claiming that no one had won a majority. The Yugoslav constitution called for a runoff between the top two candidates in the event that no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. Official results put Koštunica ahead of Milošević, but at under 50 percent. The internationally financed CeSID claimed otherwise, though its story changed throughout the two weeks between 24 September and 5 October. This led to mass demonstrations in Belgrade on 5 October, known as the Bulldozer Revolution. Milošević was forced to accept this when Yugoslav Army commanders he had expected to support him had indicated that in this instance they would not, and would permit the violent overthrow of the Serbian government. On 6 October, Milošević met with Koštunica and publicly accepted defeat. Koštunica finally took office as Yugoslav president on 7 October following Milošević's announcement.

Milošević was arrested by Yugoslav authorities on 1 April 2001, following a 36-hour armed standoff between police and Milošević's bodyguards at his Belgrade villa. Although no official charges were made, Milošević was suspected of abuse of power and corruption.

Relations with other countries

Russia

Historically, Russia and Serbia have had very close relations, sharing a common Slavic ancestry and Orthodox Christian faith. Russia is remembered by most Serbs for its assistance to Serbia during its uprising and war for independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. During Milošević's rule, Russia pursued policies that generally supported his policies. During the Kosovo conflict in 1999, some observers suggested the possibility of Russia deploying troops in support of Serbia. Russia has provided political asylum to Milošević's wife and children.

China

Milošević first visited China in the early 1980s while being head of Beobanka. He visited China again in 1997, after an invitation by Chinese president Jiang Zemin. Milošević was often popularly known in China by the nickname "Lao Mi" (老米), a shortened form of the informal Chinese-style nickname "Old Milošević" (老米洛舍维奇); among the state-operated media in China, Milošević was often referred to as "Comrade Milošević" (米洛舍维奇同志). Many sources hold that the Chinese government asserted strong backing of Milošević throughout his presidency until his surrender, and was one of the few countries supportive of him and the Yugoslav government, at a time when most Western countries were strongly critical of the Milošević government. The New York Times stated that the People's Republic of China was "one of Mr. Milošević's staunchest supporters" during the Kosovo conflict. China vocally opposed NATO armed intervention in Kosovo throughout the campaign. Chinese parliamentary leader Li Peng was presented by Milošević with Yugoslavia's highest medal (the Great Star) in Belgrade in 2000. Marko Milošević, the son of the deposed Milošević, was turned away by China on 9 October 2000. Marko Milošević may have attempted to travel to China because of the £100 million allegedly laundered into Chinese banks by the Milošević family.

The New York Times observed that Milošević, and particularly his wife Marković, had "long viewed Beijing and its Communist party" as allies and "the sort of ideological comrades" lacking in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism in the 1990s. After Milošević's indictment, China's public statements shifted toward emphasizing Yugoslav-Chinese relations rather than focusing on its support for Milošević, while after the election of Vojislav Koštunica as Yugoslav president, Chinese foreign ministry officially stated that "China respects the choice of the Yugoslavian people."

Trial at The Hague

Milošević was indicted in May 1999, during the Kosovo War, by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. Charges of violating the laws or customs of war, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Croatia and Bosnia and genocide in Bosnia were added a year and a half later.

The charges Milošević was indicted on were: genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; willful killing; unlawful confinement; willfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on civilians; destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion; unlawful attacks on civilian objects. The ICTY indictment reads that Milošević was responsible for the forced deportation of 800,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, and the murder of hundreds of Kosovo Albanians and hundreds of non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.

Following Milošević's transfer, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. On 30 January 2002, Milošević accused the war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. The trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002, with Milošević defending himself.

The prosecution took two years to present its case in the first part of the trial, where they covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Throughout the two-year period, the trial was being closely followed by the public of the involved former Yugoslav republics as it covered various notable events from the war and included several high-profile witnesses.

Milošević died before the trial's conclusion.

Posthumous verdicts

Following his death, in four separate verdicts, he was found to be a part of a joint criminal enterprise which used crimes to remove Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians from large parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. In 2007, in its verdicts against Republic of Serbian Krajina President Milan Martić, the ICTY concluded:

Between 1991 and 1995, Martić held positions of minister of interior, minister of defense and president of the self-proclaimed "Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina" (SAO Krajina), which was later renamed "Republic of Serbian Krajina" (RSK). He was found to have participated during this period in a joint criminal enterprise which included Slobodan Milošević, whose aim was to create a unified Serbian state through commission of a widespread and systematic campaign of crimes against non-Serbs inhabiting areas in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina envisaged to become parts of such a state.

In its 2021 verdict against Serbia's operatives Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović, the follow-up International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals concluded:

The Trial Chamber, therefore, finds proven beyond reasonable doubt that, from at least August 1991, and at all times relevant to the crimes charged in the Indictment, a common criminal purpose existed to forcibly and permanently remove, through the commission of the crimes of persecution, murder, deportation and inhumane acts (forcible transfer), the majority of non-Serbs, principally Croats, Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croats, from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Trial Chamber finds that the common criminal purpose, as defined above, was shared by senior political, military, and police leadership in Serbia, the SAO Krajina, the SAO SBWS, and Republika Srpska, with the core members, among others and varying depending on the area and timing of the commission of the crimes, being Slobodan Milošević.

In the two Kosovo verdicts, the Nikola Šainović et al. and Vlastimir Đorđević cases, Milošević was found to have been "one of the crucial members" of the criminal enterprise aimed at uprooting large parts of Albanians from Kosovo.

In February 2007, the International Court of Justice cleared Serbia under Milošević's rule of direct responsibility for occurrences of crime committed during the Bosnian War. The president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), however, did state that it was "'conclusively proved' that the Serbian leadership, and Milošević in particular, 'were fully aware ... that massacres were likely to occur'". In its 2016 verdict regarding Radovan Karadžić, the ICTY found that "there was no sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan [to create territories ethnically cleansed of non-Serbs]" citing "Milošević's repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership", though it also noted that "Milošević provided assistance in the form of personnel, provisions and arms to Bosnian Serbs during the conflict".

Death

On 11 March 2006, Milošević was found dead in his prison cell in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre, located in the Scheveningen section of The Hague, Netherlands. Autopsies soon established that Milošević had died of a heart attack; he had been suffering from heart problems and high blood pressure. Many suspicions were voiced to the effect that the heart attack had been caused or made possible deliberately – by the ICTY, according to sympathizers, or by himself, according to critics.

Milošević's death occurred shortly after the Tribunal denied his request to seek specialised medical treatment at a cardiology clinic in Russia. The reactions to Milošević's death were mixed: supporters of the ICTY lamented what they saw as Milošević having remained unpunished, while opponents blamed the Tribunal for what had happened.

As he was denied a state funeral, a private funeral for him was held by his friends and family in his hometown of Požarevac, after tens of thousands of his supporters attended a farewell ceremony in Belgrade. The return of Milošević's body and his widow's return to Serbia were very controversial. Attendees of the funeral included Ramsey Clark and Peter Handke.

Legacy

The last opinion poll taken in Serbia before Milošević's death listed him as the third-most favourably rated politician in Serbia behind then-Serbian Radical Party chairman Tomislav Nikolić and then-Serbian President Boris Tadić. In 2010, Life website included Milošević in its list of "The World's Worst Dictators". He remains a controversial figure in Serbia and the Balkans due to the Yugoslav wars and his abuse of power, especially during the 1997 and 2000 elections. The public image of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia oscillated between a faceless bureaucrat to a defender of Serbs, while Western attitudes ranged from Milošević being labeled as the "Butcher of the Balkans" to his portrayal as the "guarantor of the peace in the Balkans".