Special report: war crimes in the former Yugoslavia
Special report: Serbia
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent
Thursday July 26, 2001
The Guardian
The playwright Harold Pinter has joined a campaign to free the former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Pinter, who was a fierce opponent of the Nato bombing of Serbia and once defined US policy to the former Yugoslavia as "kiss my arse or I'll kick your head in", said that Mr Milosevic's extradition to face trial at the war crimes tribunal in the Hague was illegal.
"I believe his arrest and detention by the international criminal tribunal is unconstitutional, and goes against Yugoslav and international law. They have no right to try him," he said.
His decision to lend his name to the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, a loose coalition of leftwingers, human rights activists and Serb sympathisers formed in March, follows years of criticism of what he sees as the west's selective morality in the Balkans and its "persecution" of ordinary Serbs.
Although he believes that Mr Milosevic was "ruthless and savage", he has long argued that he has been unfairly demonised as the "butcher of the Balkans". He blames his former vice-president, the ultra-nationalist Vojislav Seselj, for much of the ethnic cleansing.
Pinter also says that if Mr Milosevic is to be tried, former US president Bill Clinton should join him in the dock for dropping millions of "cluster bombs that cut children to pieces - from those brave bombers at 15,000ft. And this is an act which [Tony] Blair, with his moralistic Christianity, applauds".
He also said the bombing of the Yugoslavian television station in Belgrade by Nato was "murder" and made him "ashamed of being British".
Although Pinter - currently working at a festival of his work in New York - has not given any money to the Milosevic defence fund, the committee hopes to start raising cash soon.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,527547,00.html
