Murderous Milosevic Dies

The Butcher of the Balkans is dead. The man responsible for the worst bloodshed in Europe since the Second World War died in his cell at the United Nations Prison in the Hague yesterday. Death caught up with the tyrant by means of natural causes, a form of dying that his policies denied to hundreds of thousands of people in the Former Yugoslavia while he was President of Serbia in the 1990s.

The long drawn out nature of the trial means that four years after he was handed over to the UN War Crimes Tribunal he was still not convicted of any of the 66 charges of crimes against humanity - genocide, ethnic-cleansing etc. - levelled against him. Arrogant and malevolent to the last Milosevic never showed any remorse for the central role he played in the wars that resulted from the break-up of Yugoslavia.

His death means that justice has been denied to the victims of this man’s primitive nationalism and cold-hearted disregard for the sanctity of life. Of cold comfort will be the fact that at least he spent the remainder of his life in prison. It can only be hoped that his death will give a new impetus in the hunt for Bosnian Serb War Criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic to provide some justice to the innocent victims of the Balkans Wars.

Prosecutors in the heavily criticised trial of Saddam Hussein in Iraq might also learn from this case and ensure that, while the trial is conducted with fairness and due process, a similar outcome doesn’t occur there by taking too long to convict an elderly man. Long drawn out war crimes trials are taking place in relation to Rwanda, Iraq and the Former Yugoslavia. In all of these cases closure is vital for these battered nations to put there pasts behind them.