- Title: NETHERLANDS: MILOSEVIC ARRIVES AT WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL.
- Date: 3rd July 2001
- Summary: THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS (JULY 3, 2001) (REUTERS) 1. GV/ZOOM IN: WIDE VIEW PRISON ENTRANCE / GATE 0.05 2. GV: STEEL DOOR OPENING / ZOOM OUT TO WIDE VIEW OF PRISON GATE 0.35 3. GV/PAN: BLACK BMW RACES OUT OF PRISON GATE 0.53 4. GV/PAN: MOTORCADE RACING THROUGH THE STREET / SIRENS OVERHEARD / CAR COMES TO A STOP 1.11 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 18th July 2001 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
- Country: Netherlands
- Reuters ID: LVA846QS3LTJCB3T45BISQN9TRWG
- Story Text: Slobodan Milosevic was moved from a seaside detention
unit early on Tuesday to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague
for his initial court appearance.
Milosevic faced the tribunal defiantly alone after
dispensing with legal counsel in a show of contempt for the
accusers he refuses to recognise.
"The Butcher of Belgrade" to his enemies, a hero of the
Serb nation to his dwindling admirers, the former Yugoslav
president was arraigned at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) for crimes
against humanity committed during ethnic cleansing in Kosovo
in 1999.
He is the first head of state ever indicted for war
crimes while still in office and could spend the rest of his
life behind bars if convicted.
Yet, five days after he was spirited out of Belgrade
Central prison by the Serbian reformists who toppled him from
power last October, Milosevic seems unwilling to go along
meekly with the set pattern of proceedings that have brought
dozens of others to book for a decade of genocide and
blood-letting in the Balkans.
A Yugoslav lawyer who defended him on the corruption
charges on which he was detained in Belgrade in April said
Milosevic had decided not to be represented by counsel at
Tuesday's hearing.
And he might even decide to conduct his own defence once a
trial starts, which is unlikely to happen before next year.
"Due to the fact that he does not recognise the tribunal,
he is not going to call any lawyers to appear before the
tribunal," Zdenko Tomanovic told a news conference after
meeting Milosevic at the U.N. remand centre in The Hague's
Scheveningen jail, where he has been kept in isolation since
the early hours of Friday.
After Milosevic's historic 12 minute appearance, Tribunal
spokesman Jim Lendale said, "He was there to enter a plea, he
failed to do so. He tried to make some comments but the judge
said this was not the time for speches and we would stick to
the relevant issues."
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