Slobodan Milošević

Who was Slobodan Milošević?

Slobodan Milošević was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician who was the President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. Among his supporters, Milošević was known by the nickname of "Sloba". He also led the Socialist Party of Serbia from its foundation in 1990. His presidency was marked by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent Yugoslav Wars. In the midst of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Milošević was charged with war crimes including genocide, and crimes against humanity in connection to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Milošević resigned the Yugoslav presidency amid demonstrations, following the disputed presidential election of 24 September 2000. He was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on 31 March 2001 on suspicion of corruption, abuse of power, and embezzlement. The initial investigation into Milošević faltered for lack of evidence, prompting the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić to extradite him to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to stand trial for charges of war crimes instead. Milošević conducted his own defense in the five-year long trial, which ended without a verdict when he died in his prison cell in The Hague on 11 March 2006. Milošević, who suffered from heart ailments and hypertension, died of a heart attack. The Tribunal denied any responsibility for Milošević's death, and stated that he had refused to take prescribed medicines and medicated himself instead. In February 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled separately in the Bosnian Genocide Case that there was no evidence linking Serbia and Milošević to genocide committed by Bosnian Serbs in the Bosnian war. However, the Court did find that Milošević and others in Serbia had committed a breach of the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent the genocide from occurring and for not cooperating with the ICTY in punishing the perpetrators of the genocide, in particular General Ratko Mladić, and for violating its obligation to comply with the provisional measures ordered by the Court.