Milosevic's television trial agony for Serbs

By JUSTIN HUGGLER

BELGRADE - It might have been the most excruciating 15 minutes of television Serbia has ever sat through. A nation watched as the man they once hailed as their saviour, who ruled every aspect of their lives for 13 years, stood a prisoner before the judges in a courtroom in a foreign country.

Ten minutes before the live broadcast was to begin, Aleksandra Mirosavic walked out of the room. "I can't watch it," she said. Her husband, Dragan, had to pull her back to the TV.

As the former President told the judge defiantly that he did not need a lawyer in a court he did not recognise, Mirosavic punched the air. "Yes! That's right," he shouted.

Yet the Mirosavics vehemently opposed Milosevic's rule from the start. Mirosavic worked for an opposition radio station.

"It doesn't matter how much I hate Milosevic, he was still our President," said Mrs Mirosavic. "Our people elected him and supported him for so long. It's embarrassing. That means that we are guilty, too."

It was all very different from the reaction around the rest of the former Yugoslavia, where the victims of Milosevic's decade of wars celebrated.

In Bosnia, Muslims who survived the genocide of 7000 men and boys at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica wept as they watched.

"We are looking for 10,700 of our dearest who died during the fall of Srebrenica in 1995," one woman said. "He should have been in The Hague a long time ago. There is no punishment great enough for him."

Survivors of the siege of Sarajevo said they would never be at peace until the Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, stood in the same dock as Milosevic.

The chief UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, yesterday said she expected that an indictment for genocide would eventually be brought against Milosevic for deeds committed during the Bosnian and Croatian conflicts.So far he is solely facing charges of crimes against humanity for the brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in which up to 10,000 Kosovars were murdered by Serbian security forces.

In Kosovo, Albanians cheered and shouted insults at TV screens as the man behind that campaign faced trial at last.

"I'm happy to see him in court," said Avni Zogiani, an Albanian from Pristina. "I think it's clear to him he can't escape responsibility. But he wants to go to the end in his own way: he will get a long sentence that way, but he will become a kind of hero for his people."

In Belgrade's Usce Park, where in 1988 300,000 Serbs came to scream their adoration for Milosevic at an immense political rally that confirmed the power of a man who was about to unleash a decade of wars that would lead to the mass graves of Srebrenica and Kosovo, two sisters, Jasmina Petrovic and Snezana Manojlevic, sat arguing. Petrovic said she couldn't bear to watch the court hearing on television. She had left her set on and turned her back so she could hear the sound without having to look. "I'm glad he's there but I didn't want to watch it."

Manojlevic disagreed. "He shouldn't be there," she said. "It's a really awful feeling. It's something I can't describe. He should have stood trial here."

"I don't know what to think," said her sister bitterly. "What do you think about a man who robbed your country and your people. We experienced his power on our skins. Sometimes I think that Milosevic is guilty, sometimes not at all. In the end, he is guilty, but so is the West, and so are our people."

The reformists who ousted Milosevic from power and handed him over to the tribunal said his decision not to recognise the court and make his first appearance there without any defence lawyers reflected how out of touch he is.

"Milosevic is not aware of where he is. He still thinks he's a politician." said Goran Vesic, a senior official in Serbia's ruling Democratic Party.

The Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, was keen to wash his hands.

"He is now in the jurisdiction of the international judiciary and it is his affair how he behaves," he said.

But even some of Milosevic's most diehard opponents in Serbia seemed to enjoy his defiance.

"He stayed determined in his opinions," said a young student who gave his name only as Milan. "He refused to enter a plea, and that's a humiliation for any court."

Others said they had not watched the court hearing. "I don't give a damn. He's in the Hague, and that's his problem, not mine," said Marko Jevtic.

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