Fallen Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is writhing and squirming like a serpent with its head pinned down by a stick. Appearing at his third pre-trial hearing at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Monday, Milosevic again argued that the court had no power to try him and refused to plead guilty or not guilty to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He has also again refused to appoint lawyers and sought once more to treat the tribunal and the judges with lofty contempt. So the court has appointed lawyers for him and their first move was to argue that the World Court should be asked to rule on whether the tribunal actually has to competence to judge Milosevic. The Serb leader appeared for a moment more than a little interested in the suggestion by his legal team.
But he will doubtless have reasoned that if he shows any encouragement for the idea, it will amount to an effective recognition of the judicial process in which he is caught up. Milosevic’s biggest problem, however, is that he endorsed the war crimes tribunal when he signed his name to the Dayton Accord, which brought an end to the murderous Serb violence in Bosnia and Croatia, but prepared the ground for the Serb atrocities in Kosovo.
This is a man who has raised selective memory into an art form. His political career, in which he ascended from the gray and conservative ranks of the Yugoslav Communist nomenklatura, demonstrates that he is someone of unusual abilities. He can bluster and bully one minute and charm and mollify the next. It is now clear that nothing that happened by way of Serbian aggression and genocide had occurred without his approval. He could never have imagined that by signing the Dayton Accord he was, in effect, signing in the process by which he himself would one day be brought before the bar of international justice. But there remains a long way to go before he is found guilty. The Hague tribunal seems very wisely to have committed itself to behaving with absolute correctness. No corners are being cut. No effort is being spared to be fair and considerate to the ousted dictator. He certainly never treated any of his victims with a fraction as much consideration.
His full trial, which is now set for next February, will first deal with events in Kosovo. Prosecution lawyers are warning that they will produce months of testimony from more than 220 witnesses and thousands of documents. Further indictments over Croatia and Bosnia are likely to be even more involved. Milosevic could find himself spending one year or more before a court that he willfully refuses to recognize.
But will Milosevic recognize any of the evidence as it unfolds? Will he begin to feel the slightest pangs of guilt as he hears the awful, bestial reality that his own presidential orders brought about? How long will he be able to sit arrogantly in the dock and lock out the truth about the terrible crimes for which he was responsible? How long will he be able to continue pretending to himself, and to others, that genocidal acts such as the ethnic cleansing of 8,000 innocents at Srebrenica were some heroic form of patriotic deed?
Intriguing questions.
