Arrest warrant revoked for Milosevic wife

Serbian authorities have revoked an international arrest warrant for Slobodan Milosevic’s wife, police said today.

The Belgrade District Court confirmed it had requested the withdrawal of the international warrant for Mirjana Markovic after her lawyer promised his client would appear at a hearing in September.

Markovic was wanted in connection with allegations that she abused her position during Milosevic’s decade-long rule, but also for questioning in the 2000 killing of a former Serbian president, Ivan Stambolic, who was allegedly murdered under orders from Milosevic.

Markovic fled to Russia shortly before her trial in 2003 without answering the court summons, leading to the issuing of an arrest warrant. She reportedly has been living with her son Marko in Russia since February 2003.

A top official in Milosevic’s Socialist Party, Zoran Andjelkovic, denied speculation that the warrant withdrawal was the result of a political deal.

The Socialist Party is allied with the government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

Earlier this year, the Serbian parliament rejected a demand by Milosevic’s allies that all legal charges against the former president’s family members be dropped.

Slobodan Milosevic is being tried by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of genocide for his role in the atrocities committed by Serb troops during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Vlajko Senic, deputy president of the pro-Western Serbian Renewal Movement party which is part of the conservative government, criticised the decision to revoke Markovic’s warrant, describing it as a “first-rate scandal” that ”smacked of underhand dealings.”

Rajko Danilovic, a prominent Belgrade attorney, said it was “unheard of in legal practices world over that a warrant could be revoked based solely on a lawyer’s promise his client would show up in court in a few months’ time.”

“But in our society, anything is possible,” Danilovic told the independent B-92 radio.