By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Apr 11 2001 (IPS)

The arrest of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has sparked a heated debate among Serbian politicians and legal experts over the manner in which it was handled, both before and after his detention on Apr 1.

“There were mistakes surrounding the arrest itself,” President Vojislav Kostunica admitted. “There were also mistakes in assembling the criminal charges that led to putting the former president behind bars”.

President Kostunica shares the views of those who criticise the manner of Milosevic’s arrest in which charges were clumsily and hastily put together to meet Washington’s Mar 31 deadline.

The arrest was a precondition for the release of some 100- million-dollar aid, which was approved by the US Congress just a day after Milosevic was thrown behind bars.

Although Western countries welcomed Milosevic’s arrest, local experts, including President Kostunica, remain ambiguous over it.

Milosevic lost last year’s presidential elections to Kostunica, but refused to concede defeat. The former President, who ruled Yugoslavia for 10 years, finally ceded power on Oct 5, following a popular uprising.

The only point that government officials, led by Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic, have unanimously agreed upon was that Milosevic’s arrest was “in accordance with the law” of Yugoslavia.

Yugoslav’s investigative judge Goran Cavlina has placed Milosevic under a 30-day custody. Criminal charges against him involve corruption and abuse of state funds, worth some 390 million US dollars.

“The article 26 named in criminal charges against Milosevic is the so-called ‘India-rubber’ paragraph”, says Ljubisa Lazarevic, professor of criminal law at Belgrade University. “It’s one of the most vague paragraphs, that can be widened or contracted for the immediate use … when there is no concrete act one can be charged with”.

Milosevic’s supporters and his Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) argue that their leader is “a victim of a political witch-hunt”.

“Everything was done to please Western countries”, Branislav Ivkovic, a top SPS official, told IPS recently. “A political war is being waged against the true patriot, Mr Milosevic”.

SPS, the former Communist Party that ruled Yugoslavia since WW II, organised protests against Milosevic’s arrest, with the attendance of only 3,000 supporters in downtown Belgrade last weekend.

But Milosevic threw Serbia into quandary only days after his arrest, when his lawyer Toma Fila decided to go public with his client’s appeal.

In the appeal, printed in all Serbian newspapers, Milosevic made a startling admission that the money he’s being accused of siphoning off was not used for private gain, but to finance Serb nationalist armies in Croatia and Bosnia.

Milosevic said he financed the purchase “of weapons, ammunition and other needs” for the Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb armies. “These expenses could not, as a state secret, be accounted for in the state budget,” he said.

It was the first time that Milosevic broke his silence on the break-up of the former Yugoslav federation in the 1990s. More than 200,000 people were killed and three million made refugees in those wars.

While wars raged, Milosevic and his government stood by the theory that large Serb populations in Croatia and Bosnia were defending themselves.

The wars in Croatia and Bosnia resulted in economic sanctions imposed by the international community, that ruined Serbia’s economy, but which Milosevic described as a conspiracy against the Serbs.

There had never been a single admission by Milosevic that Belgrade took part in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, until he published his appeal in the newspapers recently. Milosevic is known to have operated only through verbal orders, or by giving orders through the closest circle of aides.

“Since it was established in 1993, The Hague War Tribunal spent millions of dollars to prove that Milosevic took part in wars”, a veteran Belgrade lawyer, who preferred anonymity, told IPS.

“Now he has admitted it,” the lawyer added. “It’s very dangerous for him, and for the rest of us. We might end up paying war damages to Croatia and Bosnia, which are estimated at more than 50 billion US dollars.”

“The appeal (in the newspapers) is one of the hardest legacy of Milosevic’s rule”, Justice Minister Vladan Batic told journalists. “It directly links our country with an aggressive war, meaning we’ll have to pay war damages in the future”.

The UN War Tribunal in The Hague has indicted Milosevic for atrocities committed against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999. The tribunal is demanding that Milosevic be extradited to The Hague, a move that the Yugoslav laws is currently trying to block.

Tribunal’s prosecutors said last week they were preparing additional indictments against Milosevic for atrocities committed in Bosnia and Croatia, including genocide charges.

Legal and political experts in Belgrade say that the appeal could be a carefully calculated line of defence against the new Yugoslav leadership who ordered Milosevic’s arrest. More than 600,000 Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia reside in Serbia now.

“The claim that he (Milosevic) stole money not for personal profit, but to help Serbs fighting in the newly independent republics also could appeal to the nationalist sentiment of former loyalists who have drifted away from him amid constant accusations of corruption”, says political analyst, Bratislav Grubacic.

“That can cause trouble for the new administration, if ordinary people start asking why the man who helped our brethren is being accused of (providing) that (assistance).”

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