Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic
by Chris Stephen
Atlantic Monthly Press

Early on the morning of April 1, 2001, Belgrade police raided a house at 15 Uzicka, once the residence of Yugoslav dictator Josip Tito. They were looking for a high-priority political fugitive, a man accused of masterminding the worst human rights violations committed in Europe since World War II. The fugitive and his bodyguards were heavily armed, including with a rocket launcher, 30 assault rifles and dozens of hand grenades; his daughter alone was carrying three pistols. But after a short gunfight, in which two police officers and a photographer were injured, he surrendered.

The man the police were after was Slobodan Milosevic, who just six months earlier was the president of Yugoslavia. Today, Milosevic stands before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, a court created by the United Nations Security Council. The trial, in which Milosevic is accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, has already lasted three years and may last for several more.

In "Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic," Chris Stephen recounts how Milosevic went from a Communist party apparatchik to a nationalist Serb hardliner to spending his days in a modest cell at the ICTY's Scheveningen prison. It's hardly a simple story — nor is it pretty. During Milosevic's rule, which began in 1988, Yugoslavia famously fell apart through a series of secessions and conflicts that left millions dead, injured or homeless. (Today, in fact, Yugoslavia no longer exists, having been renamed Serbia & Montenegro for its last remaining republics).

The conflict began in 1991 in Croatia and later in Bosnia, where Serbs, Muslims and Croats became enmeshed in a notoriously convoluted conflict. During that war, which lasted until the 1995 Dayton Accords, Serb forces engaged in a an ethnic cleansing campaign, targeted primarily against Bosnian Muslims. They committed mass murders and rapes, rounding up thousands of civilians in concentration camps. Most infamous was the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica.

In 1998, what was left of Yugoslavia erupted in war again. In the southern province of Kosovo, Albanian separatists battled Serbian forces while more than 800,000 Albanian civilians fled to neighboring countries. The atrocities were arguably not as grave as they had been in Bosnia, but by this point the West had lost its patience with Milosevic. NATO began bombing Serb positions in 1999, stopping only when he ordered his troops out of the region.

Despite the brutal and often hard-to-believe events that occurred in Yugoslavia under his watch, putting Milosevic on trial has hardly been easy. First, there was the diplomatic wrangling over persuading — or, in this case, pressuring — Yugoslavia to release him to the ICTY. Once Milosevic was turned over, though, the prosecutors faced the added challenge of piecing together the evidence to show that he was directing the atrocities. Stephen notes that, early in the process, "They could find no documents showing that Milosevic ordered war crimes and no witnesses who remembered him giving such orders." He later adds: "It was not that there was no evidence against Milosevic. There was plenty of it, but the problem was that none of it showed him giving the orders." One cannot help but be reminded of the Nuremberg trials, where the prosecutors grappled with the evidence to prove that German leaders were directing the Holocaust.

As the investigations dug deeper, though, the evidence came together, and the prosecution's strategy evolved. Thus, for example, they realized that "Instead of having to try to prove a long and awkward chain of command between Milosevic and Bosnian Serb forces, [the prosecutor] could show that Milosevic had his own forces operating in the country."

Stephen notes that Milosevic's prosecutors faced particular difficulty with the charge of genocide: "Quite simply, they have not produced in public court any evidence to support this charge. Terrible as they were, the campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans are likely to be seen by the judges as projects to move, rather than destroy, the non-Serb populations." This may be true, as the legal standard for genocide has been set particularly high. (Just last month, for example, a UN commission determined that the killing of more than 70,000 civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan did not meet the genocide standard.) Stephen, however, offers no argument to reinforce this statement.

Likewise, at many points throughout "Judgement Day," Stephen skims over the more complex issues, providing little in-depth analysis. He notes for example, that when the ICTY indicted Milosevic, many diplomats worried that this would make it "much harder to negotiate with Milosevic who would surely now feel he had nothing to lose by holding out against NATO bombing." This, of course, was a valid concern. Yet, as Stephen points out, the very next day Milosevic agreed to pull his troops out of Kosovo. What was it that made Milosevic agree to this and how did his indictment influence this decision? Unfortunately, Stephen makes no attempt to answer these questions.

Stephen also devotes much attention to the recent US disenchantment with the war crimes process, but offers little connection between this and the Milosevic case. He notes America's opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is in many ways a more permanent version of the ICTY. He also briefly mentions Belgium's recent attempt to prosecute Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which, he says, caused "American suspicion of war crimes courts" to deepen. "All of this had its effect on the Hague Tribunal," Stephen argues, but he does not explain this effect nor, in fact, how US opposition to the ICC and Sharon case influenced the Milosevic case. Indeed, Stephen's inclusion of these events in his book is at best a distraction, but seems more like weakly argued criticism of US policies.

More exhaustive accounts of the events and issues surrounding the Milosevic trial have previously been published. Adam Lebor's "Milosevic: A Biography" provides a deeper understanding of Milosevic's life. Likewise, the legal issues involved in the trial are thoroughly explored by Michael P. Scharf and William A. Schabas in "Slobodan Milosevic On Trial: A Companion." Nonetheless, though less comprehensive than these other volumes, "Judgement Day" is a useful introduction to the Milosevic trial, which may be the most important political trial since Nuremberg.

In modern history, Milosevic is only the second national leader to face charges for violations of international human rights law. (The first was Jean Kambanda, who served as interim prime minister during the 1994 massacres in Rwanda.) Yet others may soon follow. Not only is Saddam Hussein likely to face trial in Iraq shortly, international war crimes tribunals have recently been established in Cambodia, East Timor and Sierra Leone. But is this a trend or a blip? As Stephen writes, "The Milosevic trial will be the measure of the entire war crimes process" and, if it succeeds, it will help the recent rise in awareness and prosecution of human rights violations become permanent.

— Yonatan Lupu (ylupu@comcast.net)