Milosevic

[erpowers]

I know this is a bit old, but I wanted to post on this topic. When the story first broke I was about to leave town and could not post then and while I was out of town I did not have internet access. From the time he died I thought he has been taken out. The fact that a person who had worked with Milosevic, but was now supposed to testify agaisnt him died a few days before made me suspious. The only question I have is what did Milosevic know that he could not testify?

[Karmakaze]

1. It wasnt a case of what he knew...

It was the fact that the prosecution case was falling apart...

<SNIP>

Srebrenica, which was overrun by Serb forces in July 1995, forms the basis of the genocide charge against Milosevic, but Wiebes, a member of a Dutch government inquiry into the atrocity, said there is nothing to link Milosevic to the crime.

<SNIP>

The prospect of the former Balkan strongman being cleared of the most serious charge he faces is a fresh blow to an already troubled case, which begins hearing defence evidence this week after several months of delays.

Note this is BEFORE Milosevic was able to present HIS evidence...

<SNIP>

Wiebes is the first senior figure to say publicly what many Hague sources have been saying privately for some time - that there is simply no evidence to back the genocide charge.

Prosecutors have spent months trying to prove otherwise, but have drawn a series of blanks, despite the appearance of high-profile witnesses. These have included former Nato commander Wesley Clark, whose evidence in The Hague last December was that Milosevic told him he knew about the crime and tried to stop it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,2763,1324024,00.html

If you have followed the case closely, including reading the actual transcripts, you would know that time after time the judges in the case acted in a biased manner, preventing Milosevic from thoroughly cross-examining witnesses for example, including occasions when prosecution witnesses had basically contradicted themselves under cross, yet Milosevic was not allowed to explore the contradiction for various reasons such as lack of time or relevence (even though the contradiction dealt with the evidence in chief presented by the witness).

In one case the head judge said that a witnesses claim of being pressured by the prosecution to testify against Milosevic in ways that he claimed amounted to torture, was not relevent to the case and thus disallowed Milosevic asking any further questions regarding the witnesses treatment by the prosecution.

This was during the prosecution's case. During that phase of the trial we got frequent updates in the media about claims being made by the prosecution, but once the defence was being presented the reports dried up - until now. Milosevic was destroying the case against him, and in the process showing how the US government collaborated with Al Qaeda to fund and supply the KLA, an extremist Muslim terrorist organisation, to carry out terrorist attacks against Serbian civillians, police and military.

That is why Milosevic had to die. It was far better for the US for Milosevic to die an accused war criminal, than to live as an acquited victim of US foreign policy - assuming the judges were not totally biased and were not going to just ignore the evidence and find him guilty anyway.

[brokensymmetry]

2. Excellent points.

You bring out details I wasn't aware of, but I got the definite impression that he was winning.

This smacks of murder; a murder that will never be investigated.

[1932]

3. If the judges are totally biased, why kill Milosevic? A guilty verdict

would achieve the same end, and you wouldn't leave doubt about his innocence.

You can't argue that the trial judges were corrupted and biased AND someone killed him out of fear that he would be found innocent.

[Karmakaze]

8. Actually I didnt say they were totally biased...

I said assuming they WEREN'T totally biased.

They had acted in a biased manner, but time and again even with all the cards stacked against him, Milosevic managed to raise considerable doubt. Also there were numerous grounds for appeal based on the way the judges prevented him from fully presenting his case.

So there was one final option I didnt spell out and that was the possibility of appeal resulting in Milosevic being further able to present information damaging to the US - especially now that the "War on Terror" makes what the US did with the KLA look like the crime of the century. 9/11 was nothing compared to the number of Serbian civillians killed by the KLA with the help of the US.

So IF the judges werent biased and acquitted Milosevic, or if the Judges WERE biased and found him guilty but he appealed, the damage done to the US could have been extreme. But give him a few pills that counteracted his heart medication and problem solved. We know without a doubt that he was in fact given such medication, because a blood test found it in his system - including a drug that is used for treating leperosy. The prosecution and by extension the US is trying to say the most heavily guarded prisoner in the Hague, under contant supervision, took these drugs intentionally. They even tried floating the idea he committed suicide the SAME DAY HE DIED. They KNOW he was murdered, and they are trying to cover up their role in it.

[1932]

14. I'm not sure that there are appeals from the Hague Tribunal.

I still don't think you can argue that he was murdered AND his trial was unfair, and that both are part of a conspiracy. You don't need to murder the guy if he's subject to a kangaroo court. Also, he was able to say whatever he wanted practically up until he died. If he had any really damaging evidence, I don't understand why it didn't come out this far into the trial.

[shance]

4. Seems that Milosevic had the "Saddam Hussein" syndrome

The truth about our Military Industrial Complex continues to reveal its ugly self.....even within our Democratic party.


Rest Easy Bill Clinton, Milosevic Can't Talk Anymore

Slobodan Milosevic is characterized in the obituaries as the "Butcher of the Balkans." If that is the story you want to read about, please go to almost any other media outlet and read it again and again. Some are now suggesting that death is Milosevic's final revenge, that he "ended up cheating history" by dying before judgment was passed.

But the world has already passed judgment on Milosevic and what is being cheated by his death is history itself.

What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well--his intimate knowledge of US war crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the US role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do at his war crimes trial when he died.

Because of the rule of victors' justice in the ad hoc tribunal system (a poor and unfair substitute for a true international court), Milosevic's case would have been the only international trial to potentially expose the details of the illegal, US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999. While the US-backed court consistently tried to limit Milosevic's right to speak, stripping him of his right to self-representation, Milosevic battled regularly to raise US war crimes.

Sadly, with Milosevic will likely die the last hope the victims of these crimes in Yugoslavia had of getting their day (if it could even be called that) in court--a tragic and unjust reality to begin with--that speaks volumes about the twisted state of international justice.

(snip)


Milosevic's death means that those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning 7 years ago this month, killing thousands, will be, once and for all protected from any public scrutiny for their crimes. However opportunistic Milosevic may have been, he would have been one of the few people to appear at the Hague that could have--and would have--laid out these crimes in great detail. Now, there is almost certain to be no condemnation of the US bombing of Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers, the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat, the use of depleted uranium munitions and the targeting of petrochemical plants causing toxic and chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. There will be no condemnation of the bombing of Albanian refugees by the US or the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train or the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Milosevic also would have discussed how the US supports a regime in Kosovo that has systematically expelled Serbs, Romas and other ethnic minorities from their homes and burnt down scores of churches. He would have discussed the role of the US in funding and arming the Kosovo Liberation Army, which operates like a death squad and how the new prime minister of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, is a US-trained war criminal who gained infamy in both the Bosnian war and the 1999 Kosovo conflict. And Milosevic would have talked of the US interference in the Yugoslav elections in 2000 and the ultimate neoliberal takeover that was the aim of Clinton's sanctions and 78 days of bombing. In reality, it would have fallen on deaf ears, but it would have been stated for the record.

It is ironic that Milosevic's last legal battle was an attempt to compel his old friend turned nemesis Bill Clinton to testify at his trial. If successful, Milosevic would have grilled the man who was US president through the entire Yugoslav war in what would have been a fiery direct examination. Clinton and Milosevic were once pals who talked collective strategy in the 1990s. Milosevic had many damning stories to tell and, without a doubt, uncomfortable questions to ask Clinton. The judges in Milosevic's case clearly worked to keep those moments from ever happening and the US government made clear its forceful opposition to such subpoenas of US officials, even considering invading a country that would put a US official on trial. With or without Clinton, Milosevic's defense would have brought to light some serious documentation of US war crimes and he died, muzzled, before he really got started.


(snip)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/rest-easy-...

[BootinUp]

5. bad link.

[BootinUp]

6. The author actually thinks Milosevic was a reliable witness?

What a joke.

[Karmakaze]

9. I love people like you...

I bet you believe everything you read in the media about Milosevic and Kosovo, yet disbelieve the same media about Bush and Iraq.

[rinsd]

10. You and Rush Limbaugh on the same page!

http://mediamatters.org/items/200603140010

Nice company ya got there!

[Karmakaze]

11. He may be a drug addicted moron...

Doesnt mean he can't get it right sometimes.

[FrenchieCat]

12. So let's see.....

Milosevic's death means that those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning 7 years ago this month, killing thousands, will be, once and for all protected from any public scrutiny for their crimes.

...What are the sources for the "thousands" who died in the bombing? According to the Human Rights Watch groups and other independent sources, the number was put at approx 500.
http://hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200.htm#P37_987
http://hrw.org/reports/2000/nato/Natbm200-01.htm#P217_53015

Are some forgetting about Bosnia, which was before Kosovo, and also the handiwork of Malosovic? what about those 250,000 that died in Bosnia by 1995?

http://www.nilemedia.com/Columnists/Ahmed/2002/February/Abandoning.html

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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[Igel]

7. I thought the guy had already

testified--Babic, wasn't it?