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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


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