The war crimes trial of Slobodan Milošević, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague lasted for just over four years from 2002 until his death in 2006. Milošević faced 66 counts of crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and was extradited to The Hague on 28 June 2001. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges. He was the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes by an international tribunal.
In 2016, the ICTY issued a judgement in the separate trial of Radovan Karadžić, which concluded that there was no sufficient evidence from that particular case that Milošević had "participated in the realization of the common criminal objective" and that he "and other Serbian leaders openly criticised Bosnian Serb leaders of committing crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing and the war for their own purposes" during the Bosnian War. However, he was found to be part of a joint criminal enterprise (JCE) in the judgments of Milan Martić, Nikola Šainović et al., and Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović.
Background
On 27 May 1999, during the Kosovo War, Slobodan Milošević was indicted by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes against humanity, violating the laws or customs of war or grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Kosovo. The indictment alleged Milošević was responsible for the deportation of 800,000 Albanians. An annex listed names of 900 people killed in Kosovo in 1999.
In October 2001, the ICTY expanded the charges against Milošević and indicted him for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Croatian War of Independence, by participating in a joint criminal enterprise (JCE) between August 1991 and June 1992 aimed at removing 170,000 Croats and other non-Serbs from a third of Croatia. The indictment alleged 32 counts of war crimes, with an annex listing 694 murdered people in Vukovar, Dubrovnik, Dalj, Erdut, Škabrnja, and other Croatian towns.
In November 2001, Milošević was indicted again, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed during the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995, including for the deportation of over a quarter million Bosniaks, Croats and other non-Serbs, as well as the Siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica massacre, and Omarska concentration camp killings. The ICTY prosecutors alleged Milošević tried to build an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia".
The charges on which Milošević was indicted were: genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder; persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; willful killing; unlawful confinement; willfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on civilians; destruction or willful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion; unlawful attacks on civilian objects.Milošević, Slobodan icty.org
The trial Duration of trial Following Milošević's transfer, the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia. On 30 January 2002, Milošević accused the war crimes tribunal of an "evil and hostile attack" against him. The trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002, with Milošević defending himself. Milošević remained defiant during the process; at the end of his first appearance, he mocked the brevity of the session by looking at his watch and saying "Fifteen minutes."
The trial lasted four years, though the prosecution took about 14 months in trial time to present its case, where they covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The trial was followed by the public of the involved former Yugoslav republics.
During the prosecution case, 295 witnesses testified and 5,000 exhibits were presented to the court recording a mass of evidence. After the presentation of the prosecution case, the Trial Chamber, on 16 June 2004, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence and ruled in accordance with Rule 98bis, that the prosecution case contains evidence capable of supporting a conviction on all 66 counts. The Defense was given the same amount of time as the prosecution to present its case. There were in total 466 hearing days, four hours per day. 40 hours were left in the Defense case, and the trial was on schedule to end by the end of the spring.
The prosecution was directed by the trial chamber to conclude its Kosovo case during four and a half to five months time span to make way for the presentation in September 2002 of the Bosnia and Croatia cases, followed by a defense case if Milošević wanted to do so. Initially the length of the trial was presumed to go for two years and instead lasted four that contained multiple adjournments which ended with Milošević's death prior to his defense case being completed.
Kosovo case
Milošević was indicted for crimes during the Kosovo war, charged with violating international humanitarian law on five counts during 1 January-20 June 1999. The first charge was Deportation (a crime against humanity). The prosecution stated in their case against Milošević that he was part of a criminal enterprise and involved in orchestrating a campaign of violence and terror to force a sizable part of the Kosovo Albanian population to leave and maintain Serb control over Kosovo. The second charge was Other inhumane Acts - Forcible transfer (a crime against humanity), which is similar to the charge of deportation though additionally implying use of force encompassing internal displacement. The third and fourth charge entailed Murder (combined in this instance as a crime against humanity and violating the customs and laws of war). Six hundred Kosovars were identified in the indictment as being killed in sixteen individual incidents during mass expulsion. In addition based upon the exhumations of mass graves and the number of missing persons, human rights organisations estimated around ten thousand Kosovars being killed during hostilities, with KLA combatants only forming a small minority of the deceased. Also counted were unarmed combatants killed in violation of the ICTY statute and Geneva Conventions. The fifth charge was Persecutions (a crime against humanity). The indictment referred to Milošević using mass forced population deportation and transfer, sexual assault, murder, along with damage or destruction of Kosovo Albanian religious sites "to execute a campaign of persecution against the Kosovo Albanian based on political, racial or religious grounds".
The ICTY indictment against Milošević referred to methods of persecution done against Kosovo Albanians to "wreak systematic and wanton destruction and damage to their religious sites and cultural monuments". The prosecution in the trial sought to prove Milošević guilty of those actions and events.. "One of the methods used to persecute the Kosovar population was to wreak systematic and wanton destruction and damage to their religious sites and cultural monuments, according to the indictment. Such destruction committed on political, racial, or religious grounds is a crime against humanity. Through the testimony of Andras Riedlmayer, an international expert on the Balkan cultural heritage of the Ottoman era, the prosecution sought to prove Milosevic guilty of it." In his defense, Milošević asserted that Kosovo Albanian heritage sites, in addition to Serb Orthodox historical and religious monuments were damaged by NATO bombing. Yugoslav Serb authorities in several cases alleged that NATO destroyed monuments, however the investigative team led by András Riedlmayer found them intact like two Ottoman bridges and the Sinan Pasha Mosque. Investigators absolved NATO of responsibility except for damage to a village mosque roof and a disused Catholic church damaged through an air blast after a nearby army base was struck by a missile. Riedlmayer's report to the Milošević trial concluded that kulla dwellings and a third of mosques were subjected to damage and destruction, with three Ottoman period urban centres being devastated due to intentionally lit fires. The report also noted that the Yugoslav Serb army, paramilitary and police forces and in some instances Serb civilians did those attacks, according to eyewitness accounts. Riedlmayer found out that Yugoslav Serb forces used as bases of operation two Catholic churches which in international law was prohibited. The investigative team noted that destruction and damage of Kosovo Albanian heritage sites were done during the 1999 war through ground attack and not air strikes. "Riedlmayer, associated with Harvard University, provided a report of his investigations of war damage to cultural and religious sites in Kosova. Based on a two-year study that he undertook with the architect and Balkan specialist Andrew Herscher between July 1999 and the summer of 2001, sponsored by Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the report concluded that three out of four urban centers dating to the Ottoman years were devastated as a result of intentionally set fires. Serbian police, army troops, paramilitaries, and in some cases Serb civilians perpetrated these attacks, according to eyewitnesses. In addition, traditional Albanian residential buildings, called kullas, were targeted for destruction. Over one-third of all mosques in Kosova were damaged or destroyed. While Milosevic asserted that NATO bombardment was responsible for damage to Kosova Albanian heritage sites as well as for damage and destruction to Serbian Orthodox religious and historical monuments, Riedlmayer’s study absolved NATO of responsibility for all but damage to the roof of one village mosque and to a disused Catholic church, damaged by an air blast during a missile strike on a nearby army base. In several cases where Serb authorities alleged complete destruction of monuments by NATO (such as the Sinan Pasha Mosque and two Ottoman bridges), investigators found the monuments completely intact. Riedlmayer described how investigators reached their conclusions that damage was not caused by air strikes.... Throughout the province, Riedlmayer and his co-investigators found damage and destruction of Kosova Albanian cultural heritage sites from ground attack during the war and what appeared to be Kosovar attacks against Serbian cultural heritage sites after the war. He also learned that Serbian forces used two Catholic churches as bases of operation, which was prohibited by international law. Riedlmayer later testified to similar destruction of Islamic religious and cultural sites during the Bosnian war."