No one imagined things would end this way. Instead of crowing in triumph, the strongman’s old opponents are filled with a strange sense of disappointment and embarrassment. When police arrived at his villa with a warrant for his arrest, he threatened. He blustered. He brandished a pistol and swore he would kill his wife, his daughter and himself rather than submit. Then he just gave up. “This is so banal,” says Biljana Srbljanovic, a prominent playwright and critic of the regime. “Seeing Slobo now, I am ashamed. It turns out we were afraid of a man who was just a fool.”
If it’s any comfort, the humiliation is even worse for Milosevic’s supporters. When he surrendered, his daughter, Marija, threw ashtrays around the living room in helpless rage. She chased him downstairs with a pistol in each hand, screaming: “Coward! Why didn’t you kill yourself?” As police tucked her father into an armored BMW, she stormed outside with both guns blazing. No one was hit, and police managed to subdue her. She has been charged with weapons violations and interfering with police. Afterward a search of the villa turned up a mini-arsenal of machine guns and other weapons.
Milosevic can expect a long, safe stay behind bars while his daughter cools off. Last week the International War Crimes Tribunal formally served warrants for his arrest and transfer to The Hague. Prosecutor Carla del Ponte insisted that the defendant be turned over immediately, and the Bush administration wasted no time before certifying Yugoslavia’s cooperation with the tribunal, thereby officially unfreezing $40 million in badly needed U.S. aid.
Whereupon Yugoslavia’s president, Vojislav Kostunica, vowed he would never hand Milosevic over to The Hague. Some press reports said the surrender’s price had included a written promise that Milosevic would never be extradited to the tribunal. But the government’s chief negotiator in the standoff, Cedomir Jovanovic, denies any such deal. Instead, he says, President Kostunica and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic issued a signed statement that Milosevic was being arrested as a common criminal under Yugoslav law. Jovanovic insists the document said nothing about what would happen after that arrest. Officials in the Serbian government have already drafted a law to allow the extradition of Milosevic on war-crimes charges. They say the handover could come as early as May.
Milosevic is in no hurry. Compared with the inmates of most Yugoslav jails, he’s in heaven. Milosevic and a growing number of his former aides are held at Central Prison in a wing his Belgrade lawyer, Toma Fila, describes as “the Hyatt.” His three-by-four-meter cell (complete with hot water and its own shower) would normally hold six prisoners, but he has the place all to himself. He gets the Belgrade daily papers and a daily exercise session outdoors. His wife is allowed to visit and bring supplies, although Fila complains that the couple have not been allowed any privacy. Reports say Milosevic is still issuing orders to his old political party. But he’s not allowed to fraternize with other prisoners, and guards watch him constantly to be sure he doesn’t carry on the family tradition of suicide. That’s how both of his parents died.
On the other hand, there’s a chance he will be sentenced to die if he stays in Belgrade long enough. Unlike the U.N. war-crimes tribunal, Yugoslavia has a death penalty on its books. (It hasn’t been used in many years, though–not even during Milosevic’s own regime.) The government is still considering what charges it will bring against the disgraced leader. Serbia’s justice minister, Vladan Batic, has announced that Milosevic will soon be charged with unspecified capital crimes, probably in connection with the murders of several critics of the former regime.
The absence of capital punishment is hardly the only nice thing about The Hague’s jail. Like other accused Balkan war criminals who are awaiting trial there, Milosevic would be allowed regular conjugal visits from his wife. The inmates get plenty of other amenities that are now denied to Milosevic: radios, computers and television–including pornographic satellite channels.
And the war-crimes block at The Hague is an amazingly friendly place. Muslims, Croats and Serbs are allowed to socialize–and they often do, despite the ethnic atrocities on their charge sheets. One Serb prisoner even wrote a drinking song for his jailhouse buddies. Prosecutors say the inmates all sing it together over glasses of nonalcoholic wine (The Hague’s jailers are nothing if not gracious hosts): “We are a small bunch, but an honest one! / If our true leaders join us, thousands will come!”
The defendants have plenty of reason to lift up their voices in song. The tribunal’s sentences have been quite lenient, especially considering the gravity of the crimes they are supposed to punish. Nine Yugoslavs have been convicted so far on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity or grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. None of them has received the maximum allowable penalty: life in prison. The stiffest punishment to date, 45 years in prison, was handed down to Gen. Tihomir Blasic, a Croat Army officer found guilty of slaughtering the entire village of Ahmici, with more than 100 women and children.
Even the maximum penalty may not be as severe as it sounds. The tribunal has a short list of “host countries” where convicted war criminals are to serve their prison sentences. According to the international body’s rules, imprisonment is to be carried out in compliance with the host country’s laws and judicial practices, including such issues as parole and time off for good behavior. Most of the designated hosts are in Scandinavia or northern Europe, where penal practices are among the world’s most lenient. Jean-Jacques Joris, the special political adviser to the chief prosecutor, concedes: “There’s no guarantee that life would mean life.”
Most observers say Milosevic will have his day in The Hague sooner or later. The question is when. Last week NATO hailed his arrest as “the beginning of the road to The Hague.” The tribunal says Yugoslavia is obliged as a U.N. member to hand over Milosevic immediately. “We are trial-ready,” says Joris. “After that, he can be sent back to Belgrade for trial on local charges.” Meanwhile, millions of survivors in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo can only wish they could live as comfortably as the fallen Serb leader.
