Brother Serbs, farewell - Milosevic's parting shot
By Sean Maguire
BELGRADE, June 30 (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic stepped aboard a Serb
police
helicopter, took what was likely to be his last look at Yugoslav soil and
said: "Brother Serbs, farewell."
The man whose years in power brought Yugoslavia to ruin was "dignified and
arrogant" as he began his journey to face international justice, according
to
a special edition of Weekly Telegraf published on Saturday that has close-up
pictures of Milosevic's departure.
The tabloid news magazine, which has good sources within the security forces
that handled Milosevic's transfer, rushed out a 16-page special sprinkled
with images of the ex-Yugoslav leader starting his journey to the U.N. war
crimes tribunal on Thursday.
Milosevic's pudgy features and snowy hair stared straight at the
photographer
in the first clear pictures of the man indicted for crimes against humanity
that have been seen since the Serb government jailed him in April on local
corruption charges.
"You've got the wrong man," the magazine reported him telling a Hague
representative after he was read the indictment against him. "NATO is the
right address, they are the villains."
"The Hague tribunal is no court, its a political circus set up to destroy
the
Serbian nation completely," reportedly added Milosevic, who ran Serbia and
then Serb-dominated Yugoslavia from 1987 to 2000.
Dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt without a tie Milosevic looked
resigned. He was not handcuffed.
A tough-looking man in jeans, t-shirt and dark glasses led the way to the
helicopter at the Institute for Security in the Banjica suburb of Belgrade.
Five uniformed Serbian police followed Milosevic, with one carrying a small
green suitcase and an overcoat. Milosevic then turned to his escort, and
with
apparent irony, reportedly said: "Congratulations on a job well done."
JOURNEY'S END
>From Belgrade Milosevic was flown to a U.S.-run airbase in Tuzla, northern
Bosnia, where he was transferred to a British military plane that took him
to
Holland. A second helicopter ride took him to Scheveningen jail in The Hague
in the early hours of Friday morning.
Milosevic's defiant words, rejecting the court's authority, suggested the
59-year-old ex-President of Yugoslavia has not resigned himself to the
prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars far from his native
land.
If convicted on the four charges he currently faces, including three of
crimes against humanity for atrocities committed by forces he controlled in
the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1999, he faces a maximum of life in jail.
Milosevic's lawyers say he wants them to defend him as a "political
prisoner," confirming the banker turned warlord regards the court as an
agent
of the NATO forces that bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 to end Serb repression in
Kosovo.
The legal team have also indicated Milosevic is not the easiest of clients.
"It's difficult to defend someone who doesn't want to hear the real truth,
and that's the type of client Milosevic is," said one advocate late on
Friday.
Prosecutors have already widened the scope of the Kosovo-related
indictments,
adding a detailed list of ethnic Albanian victims of Serb terror campaigns.
They are also planning charges relating to wars in Croatia and Bosnia, which
Milosevic is in part blamed for instigating through his nationalist
policies,
and the fallen strongman may also be charged with the ultimate tribunal
crime
- genocide.
07:30 06-30-01
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
