Historical and Investigative Research
Was Slobodan Milosevic murdered?
14 March 2006
by Francisco
Gil-White
The former president of
Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, was found dead in his cell on Saturday. That
very day, Deutsche Presse Agentur reported:
"Slobodan Milosevic was found
dead in his cell in the Scheveningen detention unit near The Hague Saturday
morning, the UN war crimes tribunal said.
The International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said Milosevic, 64, had been found 'lifeless'
shortly after 9.00 a.m. It gave no cause of death, but said an inquiry had been
launched."[1]
The Daily Telegraph reports that some in the Milosevic camp
have been alleging that the cause of death was homicide: Milosevic, his
supporters claim, was murdered at The Hague.[2]
Does the murder hypothesis
make sense?
In order to answer that question, we must first be clear on
something. If Milosevic was murdered, who would ultimately be responsible? NATO.
Why NATO? Because, though the ICTY (or 'Hague Tribunal') presents itself to the
world as a UN body, NATO officials have themselves made clear, in public, that
it really belongs to NATO.[3] This helps explain why NATO appoints the
prosecutors,[4] and why the Hague Tribunal ruled out investigating any war
crimes accusations against NATO.[5] It follows that Slobodan Milosevic, who was
a prisoner of the Hague Tribunal's Scheveningen prison when he died, was a
prisoner of NATO.
Now, since the accusation that Milosevic was murdered is an
accusation against NATO, we must ask -- as one would in a US court of law --
whether NATO had both motive and opportunity to kill him. The question of
opportunity does not require a special demonstration: Slobodan Milosevic was
NATO's prisoner, so NATO clearly had opportunity.
Did NATO have
motive?
Anybody who has followed the trial proceedings at the Hague Tribunal
knows that NATO failed utterly in supporting its case against Slobodan
Milosevic, despite tilting the entire structure and procedure of the trial
against the defense in a manner that beggars description.[6] The reasons for
this are not far to seek. As HIR has demonstrated multiple times, the
accusations against the Serbs -- for which Slobodan Milosevic was standing trial
-- are lies. For example, though NATO alleged that the Serbs had committed a
massacre of Albanian civilians in the Kosovo town of Racak, this turned out to
be a hoax.[7] This is especially embarrassing because the allegation of a
massacre at Racak was the excuse that NATO used to begin bombing the Serbs on 24
March 1999. But it pales next to this embarrassment: after claiming that the
Serbs had supposedly been murdering 100,000 Albanian civilians (or else
500,000), NATO's own forensics reported that they could not find even one body
of an Albanian civilian murdered by Milosevic's forces.[8] The failure to find
any bodies eventually led to NATO's absurd claim that the Serbs had supposedly
covered up a genocide by moving the many thousands of bodies in freezer trucks
deep into Serbia (while NATO was carpet bombing the place) without leaving a
single trace of evidence. But HIR has shown these accusations to be entirely
fraudulent as well.[9] Without any bodies, how was NATO to make a case against
Milosevic in Kosovo? They brought Patrick Ball to talk confusedly about
statistics of refugee movements streaming out of Kosovo, from which Ball
pretended to 'infer' that there had supposedly been massacres by the Serbs
against Albanian civilians, quite despite the fact that Patrick Ball's own data
called for a different conclusion.[10] None of this should be terribly
surprising for those who know that, contrary to the accusations against the
Serbs all over the media, and which helped convince the public that the NATO
assault was just, the Kosovo Albanians were the best treated minority in the
world, bar none.[11] Consistent with this, the accusations against the Bosnian
Serbs -- also lumped together in the case against Milosevic -- were similarly
lies.[12]
From the above it follows that NATO's Hague Tribunal is a kangaroo
court whose purpose is to convince ordinary people all over the world that
NATO's destruction of Yugoslavia was justified. Since, despite cheating all over
the place, NATO failed to show this in its own court (a total absence of
evidence did make this difficult), there is indeed a powerful NATO motive to
murder Milosevic: preventing his acquittal. In this way, NATO can continue to
claim that Milosevic was guilty, and nobody will be the wiser, because the
controlled media will continue to say this.
From the point of view of this
hypothesis Milosevic did indeed die just at the right time, for, as The
Washington Post explains:
"Court officials had said they had expected his
trial to conclude in May and judges to issue a verdict by the end of the
year."[13]
In other words, Milosevic died shortly before the Hague Tribunal,
under the law, would have been forced to pronounce him 'not guilty.' Convenient,
for NATO.
But there is something else to consider: there is precedent.
HIR
has published an investigation that leaves little room for doubt that Slavko
Dokmanovic, a Serb fraudulently accused of committing atrocities against
civilian Croats, was murdered in the Hague Tribunal's Scheveningen prison two
weeks before his expected acquittal.
HIR invites you to read this
investigation, which helps place in a more complete context the accusation that
Slobodan Milosevic was murdered in prison.
"MURDER AT THE HAGUE? An investigation into the
alleged suicide of Slavko Dokmanovic"; Historical and Investigative Research; 11
March 2006; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/dokmanovic1.htm
In closing, allow me to make something clear. Though I have
shown that the accusations of war crimes against Slobodan Milosevic are false,
he was nevertheless guilty, as president of Yugoslavia and Serbia, of not
properly defending the Serbs, helping cause the death of many, many innocent
people. In this he resembles Ariel Sharon, and other Israeli leaders, who have
been guilty of sabotaging the defense of the Israeli Jews. The two cases have
many
parallels.
__________________________________________________________
Footnotes
and Further
Reading
__________________________________________________________
[1] Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March 11, 2006, Saturday, Politics, 329
words, 4TH LEAD: Hague tribunal confirms Milosevic death, inquiry started, The
Hague/Belgrade
[2] Milosevic voiced fears that he was being poisoned,
The Daily Telegraph (LONDON), March 13, 2006 Monday, NEWS; Pg. 1, 399 words,
Neil Tweedie in The Hague
FULL TEXT:
"THE United Nations was under
pressure last night to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death of
Slobodan Milosevic following claims that he feared he was being
poisoned.
Preliminary results of a post mortem examination showed that he
died of a heart attack, according to a statement by the United Nations war
crimes tribunal in The Hague.
The autopsy was carried out amid suspicions
that Milosevic, who had heart problems, had been poisoned or took his own life
before he was found dead in his cell on Saturday.
Lawyers representing
Milosevic produced a letter said to be from the former president of Yugoslavia
to the Russian embassy in the Netherlands expressing his belief that he was
being poisoned in order to silence him.
The marathon four-year trial of the
man who presided over three brutal wars in the Balkans in the 1990s was due to
end at the tribunal in The Hague later this year.
Zdenko Tomanovic, one of
the Belgrade lawyers who assisted Milosevic during his trial for war crimes,
said his 64-year-old client was worried about traces of drugs in his bloodstream
apparently used only to treat leprosy and tuberculosis.
The letter was
allegedly sent on Friday, shortly before Milosevic died at the UN prison in
Scheveningen. According to a report on the Dutch public television station NOS,
the drugs, said to neutralise medicines intended to treat Milosevic's chronic
heart complaint and hypertension, were discovered earlier this year.
Dutch
doctors, the report said, ordered the tests to find out why his medicines were
not working satisfactorily.
Steven Kay QC, the British barrister appointed to
assist Milosevic as his health failed, told The Daily Telegraph that Milosevic
knew that he was gambling with his life by insisting on presenting his own
defence case.
He was worried that UN doctors were not doing enough to treat
his illness.
Mr Kay also criticised the length and complexity of the trial,
saying the decision of UN prosecutors, led by Carla Del Ponte, to try Milosevic
jointly for alleged genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo
had resulted in a completely unmanageable process.
Miss Del Ponte refused to
rule out suicide as a cause of death yesterday, but said the world would have to
await the results of the Dutch autopsy. She defended her policy of seeking a
conviction for all three wars.
Milosevic's body will be released to his
family today."
[3] "Official Statements Prove Hague 'Tribunal' Belongs To
NATO"; Emperor's Clothes; 30 June 2001; by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/h-list.htm
[4] "Madeleine Albright [at the time US Secretary of
State]...eager for war in Kosovo... hand-picked Canada's Louise Arbour to be
[ICTY -- Hague Tribunal] war crimes prosecutor, who had no experience with the
Balkans and tended to believe every atrocity claimed by the Muslims."
SOURCE:
The Ottawa Sun, April 15, 2001 Sunday, Final Edition, Comment;, Pg. C4;, 868
words, "Keeping Peace, Making War; Documentary Argues That If Nato Had Stayed
Out Of The Kosovo Conflict, The Balkan People Would Have Been Better Off," Peter
Worthington, Toronto Sun, Toronto.
[5] On 13 June 2000 the Hague Tribunal
announced that "no investigation [will] be commenced by the OTP [Office of The
Prosecutor] in relation to the NATO bombing campaign." The key word is
"commenced." The Tribunal was not saying that it had found NATO 'not guilty' of
war crimes violations; it said that "no investigation [will] be commenced." That
is, the Tribunal would not ask the question.
SOURCE: Final Report to the
Prosecutor by the Committee established to Review the NATO bombing Campaign
Against the FRY, PR/P.I.S./510-E, 13 June 2000
This document may be found in
Krieger, H. (2001). The Kosovo conflict and international law: An analytical
documentation 1974-1999, Cambridge International Documents Series, Volume II.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pp.340-352).
[6] To see an example of
the amazing bias with which court proceedings are conducted at The Hague,
see:
"The Judge As Prosecutor: Two Days At The 'Trial' Of Slobodan
Milosevic"; Emperor's Clothes; 19 June 2002; by Ian Johnson
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/ian/day.htm
[7] "THE ROAD TO JENIN: The Racak 'massacre' hoax, and those
whose honesty it places in doubt: Helena Ranta, NATO, the UN, The New York
Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, and Human Rights Watch."
Historical and Investigative Research; October 2005; by Francisco
Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ranta.htm
[8] "THE FREEZER TRUCK HOAX: How NATO framed the Serbs"; Historical and
Investigative Research; 2 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm
[9] "THE FREEZER TRUCK HOAX: How NATO framed the Serbs"; Historical and
Investigative Research; 2 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer1.htm
[10] "HOW TO LIE WITH (OR WITHOUT) STATISTICS: An examination of Patrick
Ball's indictment of Milosevic; Historical and Investigative Research; 14 March
2006; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ball.htm
[11] "The Serbs Were Not Oppressing the Kosovo Albanians... Quite the
opposite"; Historical and Investigative Research; 14 March 2006; by Francisco
Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/kosovo.htm
[12] "WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN BOSNIA?: Were the Serbs the criminal
aggressors, as the official story claims, or were they the victims?"; Historical
and Investigative Research; 19 August 2005; by Francisco
Gil-White
www.hirhome.com/yugo/ihralija1.htm
[13] Milosevic Found Dead in
Prison; Genocide Trial Is Left Without A Final Judgment, The Washington
Post, March 12, 2006 Sunday, Final Edition, A Section; A01, 1801 words,
Molly Moore and Daniel Williams, Washington Post Foreign Service, PARIS March
11
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=5578546&PageNum=0
Itar-Tass
ALL NEWS
Rusian diplomat says
Hague tribunal must be disbanded by 2010.
01.04.2006,
03.38
UNITED NATIONS, April 1 (Itar-Tass) - The Hague International
Tribunal for War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia has failed to live up to the
expectations pinned on it, since its activity is biased and its procedures
revealed an anti-Serb accusatory tendency from the very start, Russia's deputy
ambassador to the UN, Ilya Rogachov, told Itar-Tass Friday.
"Serbs make
up 80% of people the Tribunal has made charges against," he said.
He
spoke to Itar-Tass after a UN Security Council briefing on the conditions for
convicts in Scheveningen prison outside The Hague.
Russia requested the
information on conditions there after several cases of deaths among people under
investigation kept there, the list of which includes former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic and the former leader of Croat Serbs, Milan
Babic.
Rogachov said the UN Security Council conceived The Hague Tribunal
"as an instrument of peace settlement in the Balkans that was supposed to scale
down tensions there."
"We can state, however, it never reduced the
tensions," he said. "On the contrary, it fanned passions in that boiling region
of the world, and that's why it clearly failed to perform its
duties."
Rogachov indicated that the Tribunal, an agency with a huge
staff of about 1,100 people, has been operating for 13 years and its budget for
2006 and 2007 stands at around 300 million U.S. dollars.
"That's too
expensive, and its efficiency obviously doesn't match its costs," he
said.
In 2003, the UN Security Council adopted a strategy of completion
of the Tribunal's functions that envisioned termination of all investigative
actions in 2004, the ending of first-instance trials by 2008, and reviewing of
appeals by 2010.
Rogachov said, however, top officials at the Tribunal
have demanded a revision of the strategy, saying they cannot meat the specified
deadlines.
"Russia and some other members of the Security Council tell
them it's impossible to revise that strategy, but our position only got firmer
after the incident with Slobodan Milosevic," Rogachov said.
"We believe
the Tribunal must be disbanded by 2010 regardless of whether or not the leaders
of Bosnian Serbs, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadjic are seized and brought to
The Hague," he said.
"The conflict in the Balkans is settled now, the
passions have calmed down and there're no obstacles towards transferring the
defendants' cases to national courts in Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and
Bosnia," Rogachov said.
