yugoslavias implosion

DEFEAT OF THE TERRITORIAL PRETENSIONS
During the nato intervention in Kosovo in 1999, the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (icty, or Hague
Tribunal) at The Hague indicted Slobodan Milošević on charges of
crimes against humanity and genocide. The indictment was later
enlarged to include crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia. He was
extradited to The Hague by a reformist Serbian government in June
2001 and his trial began in February 2002. Just over four years later, he
died, still in the tribunal’s custody.
Milošević died before the tribunal could pass judgment on him.
His demise came as a blessing to Serbian nationalists because they
could claim that he died an innocent man, a martyr to the Serbian
cause. The public in Serbia, however, is largely unaware of the tribunal’s
decision of June 16, 2004, in which it dismissed a motion
for acquittal, explaining: “The Trial Chamber holds that there is
sufficient evidence that there existed a joint criminal enterprise,
which included members of the Bosnian Serbian leadership, the aim
and intention of which was to destroy a part of the Bosnian Muslims
as a group, and that its participants committed genocide in Brčko,
Prijedor, Sanski Most, Srebrenica, Bijeljina, Ključ and Bosanski
Novi.” 485 Milošević’s complicity in war crimes was further indicated
by the icty’s verdict of February 26, 2009, when it found five former
high-ranking Yugoslav and Serbian political, military, and police
officials guilty of crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo in
1999. This judgment establishes responsibility for the joint criminal
enterprise that was to have made possible the creation of a Greater
Serbia. One of the men found guilty, Nikola Šainović, was described
in the judgment as “one of the closest and most trusted associates of
Milošević” and a “key participant in the joint [criminal] enterprise.”
485 “Miloševiću dokazan genocid u Bosni” (Genocide Proved in Milošević’s Trial),
Međupresuda Haškog tribunala od 16 . juna 2004, Sarajevo, 2007 . (Amici Curiae
asked for Judgment of Acquittal (3 March 2004), Prosecution response to the Amici
Curiae Motion for Judgment of Acquittal Pursuant to Rule 98 bis (3 May 2004)
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