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Panel calls Milosevic's health
poor |
By Marlise Simons The New York
Times
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2005
| PARIS The declining health of Slobodan
Milosevic has led an international medical team to call for an immediate
halt to his activities and has renewed doubts about whether his long war
crimes trial can be completed next year.
Lawyers for Milosevic, the
former Yugoslav president, said three doctors, from France, Russia and
Serbia, examined him on Nov. 4 at the UN detention center in The Hague,
where he has spent the past four years.
The medical report, which
until now had not been disclosed, said that because Milosevic's condition
was "unstable" and further "complications" might arise, he would need
complete rest "for a minimum of six weeks."
The lawyers said they summoned
the medical team after their client had a brain scan and other recent
tests at a hospital in The Hague. Milosevic had been suffering increasing
pains in his neck, ears and head, they said.
"He's already taking a dozen
different medicines, and he rarely complains, but we wanted another
independent opinion," said Zdenko Tomanovic, one of Milosevic's lawyers,
by telephone from Belgrade. He declined to discuss the doctors' full
diagnosis but made available their joint conclusions, signed by Dr.
Florence Leclercq, a French cardiologist; Dr. Margarita Shumilina, a
Serbian vascular specialist; and Dr. Vukasin Andric, a Russian ear
specialist.
Milosevic's condition reopens
the question of whether the trial, now in its fourth year, can continue
without the presence of the defendant, who acts as his own lawyer. Judges
assigned two British defense lawyers to him a year ago to assist him in
cross-examining witnesses and otherwise lighten his work load in the
enormous trial that spans a decade of three wars in the 1990s and deals
with charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
But Milosevic has refused to
deal with the two British lawyers, who nonetheless attend all court
sessions. His own Serbian lawyers assist him only outside the courtroom.
The new medical report
compounds the trial's difficulties. The presiding judge, Richard May, died
of a brain tumor last year, and had to be replaced in midtrial, and
Milosevic often suffered bouts of high blood pressure and other illnesses.
But judges also said Milosevic had not managed his assigned time well and
had fallen far behind in his defense schedule because of repetitive
witnesses, digressions and irrelevant questions. He recently requested
additional time and presented the court with a list of 199 witnesses who
he said were indispensable to lay out his case.
But the judges have warned him
that he has already used up close to 75 percent of his allotted defense
time and has addressed only the part of his indictment that deals with
charges of crimes against humanity in the 1999 war in Kosovo. He has not
yet broached the larger part of his indictment that includes charges of
war crimes in Croatia and two counts of genocide in Bosnia.
Prosecutors have often said in
court that Milosevic has used his illness to gain more time to prepare his
case and has manipulated the court. Milosevic's lawyers said that they had
summoned the outside medical team in part to rebut this
argument. |
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