by Adam LeBor
However, despite warnings from doctors that his high blood pressure puts him at risk of a heart attack, Milosevic generally remains as combative as ever. His frequent colds and several bouts of influenza have slowed the trial down. The loss of over two months means that the prosecution case, already cut back, could now last until December. Milosevic will then be granted equal time for his defence. As the trial opened in 2002, his defence could last into late 2005.
The indictments over Croatia and Bosnia are both easier and more difficult for the prosecution. Easier, because the horrific crimes committed in the Croatian and Bosnian wars have been extensively documented. The massacres by Serb forces at Srebrenica, or after the fall of Vukovar, are now matters of public record. But the war in Kosovo took place on Serbian soil, while Milosevic was President of Yugoslavia. The line of command responsibility from the battlefields around Pristina to Belgrade is comparatively straightforward. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia took place in republics that had seceded from Yugoslavia and were internationally recognised sovereign states. During this time, Serbia, as Milosevic repeatedly boasted, ‘was not at war’, despite the fact that Belgrade was supplying men, weapons, ammunition, funding and political support for armies of Serb-occupied Croatia and Bosnia. The challenge for the prosecution is to prove a connection between Milosevic and ethnic cleansing and the atrocities on the battlefield.
The prosecution’s pre-trial brief is full of telephone intercepts which seem extremely damaging to Milosevic’s defence, and appear to link him directly with the leaderships of the rebel Serbs in Krajina and Knin. Milosevic’s conversations with figures including Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, State Security chief Jovica Stanisic and Yugoslav army generals Blagoje Adzic and Nikola Uzelac are extensively documented. For example, point 25 of the brief details the following:
As the Accused explained to Karadzic, ‘[if Croatia] wants to secede . . . they should be allowed to secede . . . now it’s only a question of secession on the line that’s suitable to us . . . nothing more.’ In another conversation discussing a JNA attack in Eastern Slavonia, the Accused showed he was fully engaged in the Croatian war. He told Karadzic the JNA attack had gone well, there were many Croatian casualties and ‘[t]he whole thing is, to carry out a serious operation that we talked about. I think all the steps I have taken up to now have borne fruit.’7
Intriguingly, there is also a recording of a telephone conversation between Mira Markovic and JNA General Blagoje Adzic, one of the rare links between Milosevic’s wife and the military. In another conversation, Milosevic tells Radovan Karadzic to ask Mira for General Adzic’s number.8
If nothing else, the hundreds of intercepts reveal that western intelligence agencies, and therefore western governments, were well aware of Milosevic’s central role in the Yugoslav wars. It seems almost every telephone call that he made was tapped and taped by a variety of secret services. Which sheds even harsher light on the eagerness of politicians and diplomats such as Lords Hurd and Owen, and the US envoy Richard Holbrooke to flatter and negotiate with him.
His defence is based on a now familiar cocktail of fact, fiction and bluster. This was evident in, for example, his discourse in September 2002 on the Srebrenica massacre. He began by quoting, accurately, from the 3,500 page report into the Srebrenica massacre, compiled by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), which said there were ‘no indications’ of political or military liaison between the Bosnian Serb Army and Belgrade. Milosevic then told the court:
Time will show that on the 1st of July, 1995, in the house of a Muslim, the former president of the municipality in Zvornik, where two members of the Muslim government from Sarajevo were present, the representatives of a mercenary military formation within the army of Republika Srpska but not under the command of the army of Republika Srpska but within the French intelligence service, they agreed to have this crime committed, that is to say, to abandon Srebrenica and to carry out this slaughter.9
Milosevic’s claim that ‘a mercenary military formation’ within the Bosnian Serb army taking orders from the French secret service had carried out the Srebrenica killings, is both ludicrous and bizarre, although it earned him headline coverage around the world.
Milosevic has scored some points in his courtroom duels, but an overall picture of his role in the conflicts is steadily emerging. A series of key witnesses have laid out in detail the web of connections between Serbia’s political leadership, the interior ministry and the paramilitaries who carried out much of the ethnic cleansing and atrocities, and the relations between Belgrade and the para-states in Serb-occupied Croatia and Bosnia.
Some of the most fascinating testimony has come from witnesses whose identity has been concealed for their own protection. A former JSO member who appeared under the name of ‘K-2’ testified in January 2003. K-2 had served in Bosnia. He said that the unit operated under the direct control of the Milosevic regime, and that wages were paid by the Serbian Interior Ministry. ‘We had full support in the form of ammunition, uniforms and all other necessities . . . Our unit had to do whatever it was asked to do. There was no possibility of saying no. The doors of the president were open to us.’ When K-2 was asked which president he meant, he said: ‘As far as I was able to gather, there was only one president – and that was President Milosevic.’10
K-2 was well informed about the darkest episodes in recent Serbian history. He admitted to Milosevic that he had been involved in the 2001 murder of Arkan. ‘That is the main reason why you are no longer in living in Serbia and are concealing your identity?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ K-2 replied. Milosevic dismissed K-2 as someone who ‘doesn’t know what he is talking about’ and claimed that the JSO were ‘a regular unit’, wearing red berets also worn by other police and army forces.
Protected witness B-129 also gave important testimony about the links between the RDB and Arkan, and his Tigers paramilitaries. B-129, who worked in the Tigers’ office, detailed how when Arkan needed help from Serbian State Security, she picked up the telephone and said the special password Pauk, meaning spider.11 This would put her straight through to Franko Simatovic, commander of the JSO. ‘Arkan always said that without orders from the state security, the Tigers never went anywhere.’ The Tigers were deployed on top secret operations during the Bosnian war, B-129 testified, although they were all instructed to remove their badges and shoulder flashes in case they were killed or captured.
As Arkan was too recognisable, a JSO commander was put in charge – Milorad Lukovic, aka Legija. In a small but telling piece of evidence, B-129 recounted how the Tigers crossed the border from Serbia into Bosnia bearing special number plates from the Serbian Interior Ministry. The vehicles were simply waved through the UN checkpoints, she said.
The Tigers were paid in Deutschmarks, at a rate of 1500 a month (about £500). This was a fortune, when most Serbs were paid around five Deutschmarks a month. The money was delivered in sacks, and B-129 counted it into envelopes.
The political links between the rebel Serbs and Milosevic were outlined in December 2002, when protected witness C-61 testified. After several days of testimony, C-61 came out from behind the screen that shielded his face, and also no longer spoke through a voice distorter. But by then most informed observers had worked out that the man engaging in rancorous courtroom exchanges with his ex-boss was the former president of the Serb Republic of Krajina, Milan Babic. Babic, a former dentist from Knin, is also implicated in war crimes. He is named as a co-conspirator in Milosevic’s indictment for Croatia, which means he is under investigation and is likely to be indicted himself.
Babic had never forgiven Milosevic for sacking him from the leadership of the Krajina Serbs in 1992. He testified that he had held twenty-five meetings with Milosevic in Belgrade between October 1990 and October 1991. In a dramatic courtroom confrontation he accused Milosevic of leading the Serbs to disaster. ‘You dragged the Serb people into war. You brought shame on the Serbs,’ he told Milosevic. Milosevic deni
ed his former protégé’s claims. He replied that there was no disgrace in Serbia having helped its fellow countrymen. ‘Was it a secret that Serbia assisted you? We assisted you in every respect to survive.’12
Babic’s testimony also detailed how, in 1990 and 1991, the legitimate concerns of the Serb minority living in soon-to-be-independent Croatia were exploited by Belgrade to such a pitch that they felt it necessary to take up arms, and were unwittingly used as dupes in the Milosevic regime’s plan for a Greater Serbia. Initially the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) advocated territorial and cultural autonomy for Serbs in Croatia. But under the influence of Belgrade’s propaganda, and the parallel para-state set up in Krajina by Serbian State Security, the SDS soon became more extreme and demanded ‘self-determination’ for the Serbs living in Croatia. The price of self-determination was a war, funded, armed and directed from Belgrade, a war that ended in disaster in the summer of 1995, when the Croatian army swept through Krajina and over 100,000 Serbs fled or were expelled. (See Chapter 18).
Babic himself admitted that he was seduced by Belgrade’s line, despite warnings from Stipe Mesic, now president of Croatia, that Milosevic would cheat him and he would lose not just Greater Serbia, but also his dentist’s practice. Babic’s testimony appeared to have rattled Milosevic, who eventually resorted to abuse. He used the prosecutor’s transcript of telephone intercepts of his conversations with Radovan Karadzic, in which Milosevic described Babic as ‘an idiot’, ‘ordinary scum’ and ‘Tudjman’s trump’. Milosevic told the court: ‘You see, I said the worst things about Babic’. This may not have been the most useful tactic in the long term for Milosevic’s defence, as the prosecution is making liberal use of intelligence intercepts and telephone taps. As the commentator Mirko Klarin points out, ‘in this way he confirmed the authenticity of the transcripts and recordings of the intercepted telephone conversations, which he otherwise rejected as a forgery.’13
If Milan Babic provided valuable evidence of the political ties between Belgrade and its client state in Knin, the former head of Yugoslav military counter-intelligence service helped fill in the details of the military links. Like Milan Babic, General Aleksander Vasiljevic has his own agenda. He too has been named as a co-conspirator in Milosevic’s indictment over Croatia. As a career officer in the Yugoslav army, General Vasiljevic is concerned to try and restore the reputation of the military by blaming the paramilitaries and special forces such as the JSO, under the control of the Interior Ministry, for the atrocities. Nonetheless, General Vasiljevic is one of the best-informed and most important insider witnesses so far.
Testifying in February 2003, General Vasiljevic told the tribunal that Serbian units could only have fought on the battlefield in eastern Croatia with presidential approval. ‘I do know that some Serbian TO [territorial defence] units were at the Slavonia battlefield . . . It is my opinion that such a decision would have been under the responsibility of the president of the republic.’18 Prosecutors also produced a letter from Milan Martic, leader of the Krajina Serbs, written in 1993, which asked Milosevic to pressurise the Yugoslav Army to help the rebel Serbs based in Knin. General Vasiljevic told the court that Martic’s letter showed that he believed Milosevic could influence the Yugoslav Army to issue the equipment he wanted.
General Vasiljevic’s testimony was also useful for the prosecution in highlighting the complex network of links between the Yugoslav Army and the military forces of the rebel Serb statelets in both Croatia and Bosnia. He said there were ‘two armies in two states, and there was the third state – Yugoslavia – which treated these two armies as her own, financed them, armed them and provided commanding officers.’15
Vasiljevic testified that between 1992 and 1995 up to 13,000 Yugoslav Army officers served in the armies of the Krajina and Bosnian Serbs. Considering that by April 1992 Yugoslavia was reduced to the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic exerted untrammelled power, this is a potentially devastating piece of evidence, that directly links Belgrade with the wars and ethnic cleansing for which Milosevic has been indicted.
Vasiljevic also testified about the links between the Serbian Interior Ministry and the paramilitary formations that were formed under its tutelage. He told the court that two Serbian State Security officers were assigned to the Eastern Slavonija region of Croatia, in February 1992, after its capture by rebel Serb forces. Eastern Slavonija was the site of some the worst atrocities in the Croatian war. One of the ghastliest mass killings occurred at the village of Lovas on October 15 1991 when about thirty Croatian villagers were forced to walk through a minefield. Twenty-one people were killed, according to Annex One of Milosevic’s indictment. Several were relatives. Three members of the Sabljak family lost their lives: Ivan, born in 1960; Marko, born in 1950; and Tomo, born in 1949.16
It is impossible to imagine the terror that the villagers must have felt as they were forced to walk to their deaths, wondering when they would hear the click of the mine’s trigger, before the explosion that would blow them to pieces, all the while under the mocking laughs of the Serbian paramilitaries. Six days later General Vasiljevic received notice from Yugoslav army security of the massacre, carried out by members of the paramilitary unit Dusan Silni (Dusan the Mighty).17 As the perpetrators of the massacre were Serbian citizens, Yugoslav Military intelligence informed the Serbian interior and defence ministries, testified General Vasiljevic.
Further insight into the financing of Milosevic’s parallel state was provided in July 2002 by the testimony of Rade Markovic, who succeeded Jovica Stanisic as head of Serbian State Security (RDB) in 1998. Markovic related how the RDB’s budget was insufficient to meet its needs. The RDB controlled the Special Operations Unit (JSO). When the JSO needed funds, they were obtained from the Federal Customs service, controlled by a long-time Milosevic loyalist, Mihalj Kertes, he told the court. ‘In order to get such funds approval was required. This approval for allocating funding for the state security or the army of Yugoslavia or I don’t know who else, had to be obtained by Mihalj Kertes from Slobodan Milosevic.’
RDB employees picked up the funds from the customs, and handed it to the Interior Ministry department in charge of finances and pensions. The money was handed over in foreign currency, in cash, detailed Markovic. It was then placed in a bank, from where it was used to pay for goods supplied to the RDB. The bank was Beobanka, a unit of Milosevic’s former employer Beogradska Banka. The banker was Borka Vucic, Milosevic’s long-term shadow finance minister (see Chapter 17).18
Milosevic’s successor as Serbian president joined him at the ICTY in January 2003. Milan Milutinovic pleaded not guilty to crimes against humanity in Kosovo. Three months later, a man regarded as a hero by many Bosnian Muslims arrived. Naser Oric, commander of the defenders of Srebrenica, was arrested by UN peacekeepers in the northern Bosnian city of Tuzla. Oric, once one of Milosevic’s bodyguards, is accused of war crimes against Serb villagers during the Bosnian war. However, NATO troops were unable to locate or arrest the tribunal’s two most wanted, General Ratko Mladic, and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who remained free at the time of writing.
If one purpose of the ICTY is to promote eventual reconciliation, then the former Bosnian Serb leader Biljana Plavsic made some small amends for the crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb army. Plavsic had initially pleaded not guilty to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But she later pleaded guilty to one count of persecution, and the other charges were dropped. Shortly before the end of her hearing in December 2002 she made a dramatic courtroom confession, a mea culpa that resounded across the former Yugoslavia. ‘The knowledge that I am responsible for such human suffering and for soiling the character of my people will always be with me,’ she said. Serbs had committed crimes out of ‘a blinding fear that led to an obsession, especially among those of us for whom the Second World War was living memory, that Serbs would never again allow themselves to become victims,’ she told the court. ‘In this obsessi
on of ours to never again become victims, we had allowed ourselves to become victimisers.’19
While some dismissed it as empty words, others saw the first glimmerings of the process of a public coming to terms with the bloody events that had torn the country apart. On February 28 she was sentenced to eleven years in prison, which at the age of seventy-two was, in effect, a life sentence. ‘This is nothing compared to what misery I have seen in my life,’ she said in Belgrade before returning to The Hague for sentencing. ‘This is the end of a road which I started a long time ago.’20
Yugoslavia too has come to the end of the road. In February 2003 the country officially changed its name to Serbia-Montenegro. Laconic Belgraders have already dubbed the country S&M, or ‘Solania’, in honour of the EU’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana who brokered the deal. One of the first acts of the new parliament was to amend a law to allow more extraditions to the ICTY. But the union of the two republics is unlikely to last long, and it seems likely that both Serbia and Montenegro will within the near future become independent states, the final stage in the process of dissolution that began in 1991.
Historians may debate for decades whether Yugoslavia was a viable entity, but when the forces seeking to break it apart became stronger than those holding it together, it was clear the centre could not hold. War, however, was never inevitable, despite the fact that Serbs – and other nationalities – were spread outside the borders of their home republics. By the end of the twentieth century the craft of statehood was flexible enough to assuage the fears of some Serbs that they were about to be stranded under a unfriendly flag. National autonomy, cultural autonomy, confederation, joint or multiple-citizenship across free and open borders, the list of possible solutions for national and ethnic questions is endless – if the political will is there. Czechoslovakia separated in a smooth and peaceful disassociation, so did – more or less – the Soviet Union, which was potentially far more explosive than Yugoslavia.