Death of Milosevic

Posted by Amanda Kendle Mar 15, 2006

Milosevic died after a heart attack while in detention in the Netherlands facing war crimes charges.

The casket containing his body is currently on public view in a Belgrade museum, before the burial takes place on Saturday in his hometown in the country.

Milosevic was president of Serbia for twelve years and then president of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. The United Nations war crimes tribunal, having started in 2002 and finally being near to an end, had been trialling him for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the 1990s.

The conflict in the Balkans is difficult for travelers to really get a good grip on, but it's definitely something that confronts you when, for example, you stand in front of bullet-hole-ridden buildings in Mostar or Sarajevo, as I did last summer. The greatest impact for me came from the otherwise total normality of the region: life goes on despite the simmering problems. These tensions which still exist in the Balkans have been shown again by the differing reactions to Milosevic's death.