Milosevic funeral today

Slobodan Milosevic was to be laid to rest today with a private funeral expected to draw tens of thousands of followers – their admiration unshaken by the fact he was on trial for some of Europe’s worst atrocities since World War II when he died.

Milosevic died a week ago in his room in a detention centre near the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, which was trying him on 66 counts of war crimes, including genocide – the first head of state to be extradited by his country for trial by the UN court.

Milosevic’s Socialists and ultranationalists, ousted from power along with Milosevic in 2000, are hoping to make political gains from their leader’s death by inviting hundreds of thousands of his die-hard supporters to his ”final farewell” in Belgrade and the burial in his hometown of Pozarevac, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the capital.

Police have said they did not expect any trouble, despite reports that opponents of Milosevic might be planning an afternoon rally on Belgrade’s Republic Square, not far from the venue for the farewell ceremony.

The former autocratic president’s loyalists planned to display Milosevic’s coffin in front of Belgrade’s downtown federal parliament building – the very spot where a massive protest led to his ouster on October 5, 2000.

From there, his body was to be driven to Pozarevac to Milosevic’s family compound. There, in the backyard – beneath a linden tree where he first kissed his wife, Mirjana Markovic – Milosevic will be interred in a double grave with space for his widow, who said she wants to be buried with him when she dies, Serbia’s state television reported.

Socialist organisers of the ceremony said no member of the immediate family would attend.

“It is now definite the family will not be coming to the funeral,” Milorad Vucelic, deputy president of the Socialist Party, told Serbia’s state television late yesterday.

Markovic, in self-imposed exile in Russia, faces Serbian charges of abuse of power during Milosevic’s 13-year reign.

Socialist Party members have kept a two-day vigil by Milosevic’s coffin, draped in a Serbian flag, since it went on public display on Thursday at Belgrade’s Museum of Revolution. The party organised the funeral after authorities refused state ceremonies for the former Yugoslav president.

But the turnout of mourners who passed by the coffin was much lower than organisers’ predictions of hundreds of thousands. It was nowhere near the huge crowds Milosevic once commanded in his heyday, when his fiery speeches inspired his followers to take part in the 1990s wars in neighbouring Bosnia and Croatia, and in Kosovo.

Questions and accusations have swirled this week about Milosevic’s death. Markovic and her son say the former leader was poisoned; the tribunal says an autopsy revealed he died of a heart attack, and a Dutch toxicological report said he was not poisoned. Russia claims Milosevic was not properly treated.

Questions were raised about the cause of his fatal heart problem after it was reported he had been taking medicines that were not prescribed by the UN cardiologist.

“No evidence of poisoning has been found,” Tribunal President Judge Fausto Pocar said in The Hague yesterday, reading the preliminary results of a Dutch toxicology report. A number of prescribed medications were found in his body, “but not in toxic concentrations,” he said.

Branko Rakic, Milosevic’s legal adviser during the war crimes trial, called Pocar’s statement “scandalous.”

“Today, such a huge array of falsehoods has been presented, indicating that someone’s conscience obviously isn’t clear,” Rakic said.

“Those who were in a position of monopoly over Milosevic’s health, denied him proper and adequate treatment,” Rakic said. “If Milosevic had been in a hospital, he would have been alive today.”