I sit in the press gallery of court number two at The Hague, separated from Slobodan Milosevic by a sheet of floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass, thumbing through the list of charges. I’m looking for familiar place names. Like many of the reporters covering Milosevic’s trial, I’ve spent a good part of my life covering the events he is now accused of instigating. His charge sheet is bound in blue covers and reads like a guidebook to the worst European neighbourhoods of the 1990s. It contains more than 500 incidents spread over three wars, spanning nine years during which Milosevic’s regime brought chaos to the Balkans and panic to the chancelleries of Europe.
First up is the Croatia indictment. In 1991, the Croats split from Yugoslavia and Milosevic sent in the tanks. My own first-blooding came in a bombardment of the hospital in the little eastern town of Vinkovci. I fled to the basement, to be confronted by a man being rushed in on a stretcher drenched in blood. He was a wounded patient awaiting evacuation. Then the shells hit, and he was wounded all over again. There is no mention of this incident, only of a much worse one, when Milosevic’s men rounded up 255 patients and staff from the hospital of the neighbouring town, Vukovar, marched them outside and shot them.
Next is Bosnia. When Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats declared independence in 1992, the Serbs again went to war. Technically, Milosevic himself was not at war, since Bosnia was a separate state. But the Bosnian Serbs used his shells, his equipment, his money and his paramilitary gangs to carve a path through the country. I was denied access to the notorious death camps featured in the Bosnia indictment.
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