Trump from The Hague: A verdict against Milosevic would make it more difficult to try KLA leaders

24 years ago, the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, known as the Butcher of the Balkans, began.

KosovaPressi brings an interview with the researcher of the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Nevenka Tromp, from the building then known as the Hague Court.

Tromp remembers the day of February 2nd when this process began, mentioning the crowd of journalists surrounding the facility.

“It was 24 years ago when the Milosevic trial began in this building behind me. If you were to look at the archive footage, this whole square here was packed with satellite dishes from all the world’s media. You couldn’t get past the crowd of journalists – it was the main news all over the world. And now, 24 years later, we have a similar situation with the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, where the leaders of Kosovo, the wartime leaders, opponents of the Milosevic regime, are giving their closing arguments in a criminal trial against them,” she says.

Milosevic was tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

The author of the book "The Unfinished Trial of Slobodan Milosevic" speaks to KosovaPress about the importance of this process for Kosovo in particular.

Tromp emphasizes that during Milosevic's time in power, mass crimes and great atrocities occurred.

“First of all, Milosevic was president for almost 10 years, first of Serbia and then of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. During this time there were three wars in a row where mass crimes and great atrocities took place. After 1995, when Milosevic was one of the architects of the Dayton Agreement for Bosnia, he had a chance to rehabilitate himself, because we remember the photos in Paris from December 1995, where he was shaking hands with Alija Izetbegovic - president of Bosnia, Franjo Tudjman - president of Croatia and Bill Clinton. And somehow he failed to keep himself on the good side of history. He could not leave Kosovo free and by entering the Kosovo war, he was cemented in world history as a negative figure, as a man who abused political power and was responsible for mass atrocities. He was initially indicted for Kosovo because, after Dayton, he thought: I am sure, no one will indictment for Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. But once he lost power in October 2000 and was transferred to The Hague solely on the basis of the indictment for Kosovo, in June 2001, the prosecution expanded the indictment with two more: one for crimes in Croatia from 1991 to 1995 and one for crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including genocide.

This process, Tromp adds, was of particular importance, since the crime of genocide was being tried on an individual level for the first time.

"This was big news, because the crime of genocide was being tried for the first time on an individual level in relation to the Yugoslav wars, but also for the first time a genocide indictment was filed against a state, against Serbia, at the highest UN court here in The Hague. Through Milosevic's indictment, the world understood that there is a way to confront the crime of genocide both on an individual level, at the presidential level, and at the state level. Why there were no genocide charges for Kosovo in the indictment, this remained unresolved, because his death and subsequent developments in criminal law interrupted any further investigation for possible evidence of genocide in Kosovo in 1998–1999", Tromp emphasizes for KosovaPress.

If this trial were to conclude and there were a verdict against Milosevic, Tromp says it would be difficult to try the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army today.

“From a legal point of view, it would have been very important to have a verdict against him. His personal responsibility clearly confirmed in the language of the law would have implicated the Serbian military leadership in the criminality much more. I am sure that it would have been much more difficult, 20 years later, for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers to try the KLA leaders for crimes in Kosovo. It would have seemed much more immoral and unrealistic compared to what a verdict against Milosevic as head of state would contain. I have no doubt that of the 66 counts in the indictment, he would probably not have been found guilty of all, but he would have been guilty of most. And the indictment for Kosovo was very important, because it would have reinforced the narrative of asymmetric responsibility in the wars — meaning that no other party, as an individual or as a state, had a greater role and responsibility for the violent disintegration and the commission of crimes than Milosevic, the Serbian political, military and police leadership, and finally Serbia itself as a state," she concludes.Indeksonline/

The trial against Milosevic began on February 12, 2002, and lasted until March 2006, but it did not reach a final verdict because he died in prison.