Milosevic's body returns to Serbia for funeral

Slobodan Milosevic’s remains will be flown home today for a funeral in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, later in the week, a family lawyer said.

The late ex-Yugoslav leader – who died while still on trial for genocide and war crimes – may not be buried in a state funeral with full honours but will be given a respectable burial, another Milosevic adviser said.

The simultaneous announcements in The Hague and in Belgrade brought an end to a day of speculation over where Milosevic, who died on Saturday, would be buried.

Earlier yesterday, a top official from Milosevic’s Socialist Party said in Belgrade with “99% certainty” that the funeral would take place in Moscow - home to his widow and son, who fled Serbia to Russia in 2003 in self-imposed exile. His daughter, Marija, lives in Montenegro.

But family lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic said late yesterday outside the UN tribunal building that Milosevic’s son, Marko, informed the UN war crimes tribunal of the decision to send his father’s body to Belgrade.

In Belgrade, Milorad Vucelic, vice president of the Socialist Party of Serbia, said after discussions with the Milosevic family, “the decision has been reached to organise a dignified funeral for our late president” in the Serbian capital, tomorrow or Friday.

Legal adviser Branco Rakic said Milosevic’s widow, Mirjana Markovic, intended to attend the funeral.

A warrant for Markovic’s arrest – for abuse of power during her husband’s reign in the 1990s – had complicated the issue of where to bury Milosevic. Earlier yesterday, a Belgrade court suspended the warrant but ordered her passport seized if she returns to Serbia.

Initially, the family had sought a state funeral with full honours for the former president. Though that appeared unlikely, Rankic said Milosevic would be given a respectable burial.

Milosevic died on Saturday aged 64 in his jail cell near The Hague, just weeks before his trial – on charges that he orchestrated the four wars that broke up Yugoslavia at a cost of some 250,000 lives – was due to end. Preliminary autopsy findings showed he suffered a heart attack, the tribunal said.

But Marko Milosevic said yesterday that he suspected foul play: ”He got killed, he didn’t die. He got killed. There is a murder,” he told AP Television News yesterday.

He and Tomanovic spent more than an hour at the forensic institute. Several hours later, Milosevic’s body was transported from The Hague to a morgue in Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Tomanovic said Milosevic’s body was expected to return home to in Belgrade around 3:30 p.m. (1.30pm Irish Time) today.

Rankic accused the tribunal of negligence in caring for Milosevic’s chronic heart problems and high blood pressure.

“They completely neglected his health,” the lawyer said, charging that tribunal doctors didn’t adjust his medication properly.

Toxicological reports will be released in the coming days, a UN tribunal spokeswoman said.