Read this article about the death of Milosevic, bringing pieces together. Use it, edit it, forward it !
Comments, remarks, additions and other viewpoints, which may contribute to establish that homicide was committed againt Milosevic are warmly welcome !
regards,
Nico Steijnen
Article, published, partly, in the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad on 16 March 2006, free for futher publication.
Please use it, edit it, forward it!
Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen
Couwenhoven 52-05
3703 ER Zeist
030-6956867
mailto:sagitar@hetnet.nl
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TRIBUNAL HAD A MOTIVE FOR MURDER
Even when it ever would be evidenced beyond doubt that Milosevic was not murdered as a result of direct action, this still doesn't mean that there was not committed homicide against him.
Milosevic was, from the beginning in his cell in the Hague, a person affected by severe health problems. So it was, for malignant forces, easy to forecast that, in order to get rid of him, no direct attempts on his life, which always may bring about the risk of leaving traces, were necesssary. And that a succession of secret actions, direcly aimed at further undermining of his health were sufficient to make sure that he, sooner or later, was bound to succumb. Certainly if such secret actions against his health were conducted in combination with malicious medical negligence and the extreme stress put upon him by the working conditions and the expediciency the tribunal forced him to.
Therefore, such a more sophisticated course of action would be far preferable to blunt direct liquidation.
Convincing evidence of deliberately undermining Milosevic's health
And there are, though there is no clue to direct murder, already at the moment quite a lot of convincing indications that Milosevic was killed in this indirect way.
The specific element of his, from the beginning, medical negligence is a already a well-document story, just like the enormous pressure put upon him by the tribunal by its devasteting claims for expeciency.
These subjects require a separate description.
This article limits itself to some serious indications that Milosevic's health was deliberately undermined by covert direct actions. At least during a number of crucial episodes of his process. Episodes in which there have been persistent efforts to 'switch him of', to silence him.
Unfortunately for the tribunal, periods of increased attempts to 'switch him of' turn out, viewed more closely, to coincide with a number of very suspect events discussed here below.
A failure for NATO was threatening
But first the following must be said.
In a climate where loyal friends of the tribunal have been given the monopoly over reporting in western countries, it is no wonder that an image has been created of the Milosevic trial that is completely alien to the reality.
In the discussions I have had with different people
about Milosevic's death, the prevalent opinion was that no matter how valiant this man´s resistance was, or alternatively, how impudent, the evidence against him was growing in a trial that went on for years and that he was a man who felt the ground sinking under his feet, now that the trial was drawing to a close. And who was thus ripe for some desperate act.
This cherished image thus elicits its own psychologisms.
So this image is dominant in western public opinion, resulting from persistent biased information, portrayed by bootlickers of the tribunal, passing themselves disguised as ´reporters´.
The reality concerning the Milosevic trial was diametrically opposite. A reality which can also be verified by everyone.
All one needs is to take the trouble of reading the trial transcripts.
It is nothing short of an objective and hard fact that it was not Milosevic who was under attack in his trial but the tribunal. And not only ´today´.
When the prosecutors had to conclude their evidence after years, prominent Dutch newspapers, like the Volkskrant titled its article ´No conclusive evidence against Slobodan Milosevic´ (VK 26 February 2004), and the NRC even chose the title: ´Case against Milosevic 'falls apart’´ (NRC 28 February 2004).
This, already at that moment, matter of fact is, through the last years, clearly deeply sunk in collective subconsciousness, apparently as a result of the stereotyping, increasingly hammered by the tribunal protagonists that the tribunal was mercilessly busy nailing down the rogue Milosevic.
For years the prosecutors called hundreds of witnesses against him and rained tons of documents on him, but still a 'sound case' against him was missing.
Things got only worse for the tribunal when Milosevic finally started his defense. What the flatterers of the tribunal, passing themselves as reporters, hid from the general public in Western countries is that with the help of his witnesses Milosevic, more and more, wreaked havoc on what was still left from the accusations.
What he was able to show over the past 16 months, to a great extent with the help of Western witnesses, was not only catastrophic for his prosecutors but it was also so disastrous to NATO that it must have sent an alarm.
Just as the Western public opinion, misled and manipulated by a common front of politicians and media had to be reversed as regards the myth of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction after the war of aggression against Iraq, in the same way Milosevic exposed at the tribunal systematically the Western misconceptions about the NATO´s war of 1999 against Yugoslavia.
Charge of chasing 'a Greater Serbia' no longer persued
In August 2005 prosecutor Nice felt compelled to announce that Milosevic would no longer be prosecuted on the central indictment that he tried to create a Greater Serbia with violence.
This brought down the whole construction of the complaints raised against him, which was based on, and kept together by, the central charge that Milosevic, as the leader of a criminal organization, did everything to create a Greater Serbia.
During the tribunal´s session on 29 November 2005, according to the transcripts of the proceedings, Milosevic reacted to this as follows:
'On the 25th of August this year, Mr. Nice, after three
and a half year of trial, said that he was not prosecuting
me on account of a Greater Serbia, and he ascribed that
idea to me from the very outset, from his introductory
remarks and then through the testimonies of almost half of
even more than half of his witnesses who - his witnesses, who spoke of a Greater Serbia as my objective and answered questions put by him to them in that context. (...) What is the fate of these proceedings that have been going on for over three years where you and I, and problably the other side, thougth that I was being tried for a Greater Serbia, which was the objective of some kind of alleged joint criminal enterprise? So what was what we tried to deal with when putting questions to the witnesses and in dealing with all the evidence, because that is what Mr. Nice was alleging through his witnesses? So then, what is the legal validity of that part of the proceedings, when we are all being deluded into believing that this was the main objective of the Prosecution? So what´s the point of all these witnesses who talked about a Greater Serbia as my primary goal here? Are you going to take that out of the evidence, or are you going to let me examine them further?
Also what about this joint criminal enterprise? And what would its objective be after this change? And what is this phantom of a joint criminal enterprise that is being discussed here? And what is it that is exactly being alleged? People who are sitting here, including you, on the one hand, simply cannot know all the things that are referred to in all these documents that Mr. Nice served - a million pages, no less - and no one knows what the Prosecutor is prosecuting, including the Prosecutor herself. She doesn´t know either.
I think even Franz Kafka would feel that he did not have great imagination compared to this.´
Further havoc to NATO's carefully spinned positions
But the damage, caused by Milosevic to the Tribunal, was getting even bigger. And it turned against the Western accusers themselves like a boomerang.
Milosevic presented, again with mostly Western witnesses, forceful evidence that there was no humanitarian emergency in Kosovo on the eve of the NATO war of 1999 against Yugoslavia, that the KLA was conducting a large-scale terrorist campaign at the time, that international terrorism had secure positions in Bosnia while it was being supported by the West throughout the 1990’s, that the Twin Towers suicide terrorist Hatta resided there for a number of years in the 1990’s and that Osama Bin Laden was received by the Bosnian president Izetbegovic in November 1995.
It became a reflex for the tribunal judges to immediately dismiss these last testimonies as 'irrelevant'. Obviously, they attempted to keep a lid on such explosive announcements.
As if this had not been bad enough for the tribunal's case, Milosevic's witnesses gave also evidence that the Albanians were not driven out by the activities of the Serbian army in Kosovo but mostly as a result of the intensive NATO bombings and the intimidation by the KLA. For that reason there were also relatively more Kosovo Serbs among the refugees than Kosovo Albanians during the 1999 war.
When Alice Mahon, who was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at that time, finally gave evidence that the civil population was openly terrorized by the NATO bombings in the 1999 war, Milosevic was found dead a few days later.
Motives on NATO's side
Milosevic thus did not have a motive for suicide but the tribunal-entourage working for NATO did have a motive for murder. And let there be no misunderstanding that the tribunal is swarming with officials who have close connections with NATO.When the former vice-prosecutor Hewitt stepped back, he already stressed in an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad that countless tribunal officials spent at least as much time at the US Embassy in the Hague as at the tribunal's office.
The case was getting completely out of hand for NATO(countries), the instigators and the financers of the tribunal. Earlier attempts to silence Milosevic by assigning him a lawyer and to reduce him to silent ‘attendance’ in his own trial failed. Then there was the unexpected factor which the tribunal could not control, namely the massive refusal of the witnesses to appear as witnesses under such conditions in the first place. Under this massive boycott the trial was on the verge of disintegrating.
It is obvious that enormous interests are at stake. After Abu Graïb and Guantanamo Bay, people, also in the West, are less gullible regarding the Western scruples in matters concerning human rights.
Milosevic's determination
I am one of the few Dutchmen who has had candid discussions with Milosevic. That way, I have had the opportunity to get to know him personally, as well as his standpoints and motives, in an informal setting. I can say that as a lawyer I have seldom met anybody who was so convinced of his case. And of his possibilities to prove it. If something escaped him, that was commonplace intrigues. He had a mission and he stood behind it, without reservations.
Also his assigned counsel Steven Kay declared 11 March 2006 on BBC World that he spoke with Milosevic just some weeks ago about suicide. Kay stated that he could not imagine that Milosevic had undertaken any suicidal action, that Milosevic, to his opinion, was determined to bring this fight before the tribunal to an end and that Milosevic told him that he had not waged this legal battle with an intention finally to bring at stake his own life.
This opinion is shared by everyone who was in close contact with Milosevic. He was firmly determined to finish his job.
The next witness, scheduled to testify, the former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic, told a news conference that Milosevic, during the last months of his life and imprisonment, was 'strongly and deeply' convinced that he was being poisoned by the tribunal.
Bulatovic stipulated:
"The crown proof that Milosevic was poisoned is the Hague tribunal's indifference - the tribunal did nothing - although the medication was found in his bloodstream on 12 january, while the results of tests were given to Milosevic only on 9 March."
He also stated:
"On 9 march, Milosevic spoke to the assistant of the imposed defence lawyer, Gillian Higgins and asked her to refer to the court council his request that an independant medical commission establish whether he was being poisoned."
And H.E. James Bissett, the former Canada's Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992, who testified as a witness on February 23-24 said in an interview with CKUK's 'Monday's Encounter':
"When I went te see him in penitentiary in the Hague, Milosevic was dressed very casually. (..) He looked good. He had good color. He was relaxed. He had a sense of humor. He was obviously busy trying to prepare for my testomony and he struck me as being reasonable content with the way the trial was going on."
And:
"The following day, however, it was in the afternoon around five o'clock after two or three hours with him, he suddenly became flushed in the face and clasped his hands to his head. I was startled and asked if he was all right. He answered that he was O.K. and explained that he suffered from a loud ringing sound in his ears that seemed as though he was speaking in an empty pail. He told me that although his blood pressure was under control he had this constant ringing and echoing sounds in his head."
And, finally, Socialist Party aide of Milosevic, Milorad Vucelic, recounting a phone conversation the day before Milosevic's death, declared that the ex-president was very defiant:
"He told me, Don't worry, they will not destroy me or break me; I shall defeat them all".
More than 200 pages appeals to the tribunal to stop it to endanger his life
If “they” did not kill Milosevic, for which they had every power and opportunity in a setting like the prison, then they drove him to death. The warnings, appeals and supplications by organizations that were sympathetic to him to stop compromising his life and health, consists of more than 200 pages accumulated over the years.
Not only medical negligence
But, as already stipulated, also strong indications remain that there was not only a matter of medical negligence but there are also strong indications that his health deliberately and directly was undermined during, certainly, at least some crucial periods of his process.
The final piece is constituted by the very suspect events during the first period of 2006. After it became clear that it would be impossible to stop Milosevic to continue, through his witnesses, to establish facts which are for NATO and its usual tales about the recent Yugoslav history higly compromising.
In January 2006 a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, and interfering with medicines Milosevic was taking for high bood pressure and vascular disease was found in his blood samples, but this was never made public untill shortly before his death.
According to an official statement after Milosevic´s death by the tribunal's registrar Holthuis, the tribunal would not have not been informed about this medical report before March 7, 2006. Neither Milosevic himself was informed before this date about this medical report.
This state of affairs raises the more suspicion since, normally, Milosevic received all medical reports concerning himself shortly after his examinations and so did the tribunal, when it was the commissioner of the medical reporting.
Urgent questions
So the question raises: why this report was kept secret for such a long time? And who decided to keep this report secret for such a prolonged period of time?
This are the more urgent questions because there is no doubt that this drug in his blood was extremely dangerous for him and made him to be in acute mortual danger.
So who decided to keep him for such a prolonged period in mortual danger?
Those who decided to keep this highly explosive and alarming medical report secret for two months must also have been well informed about the content, and, as a consequence, they must must have been fully aware that Milosevic's life was at stake by the drugs found in his blood.
Were it the same forces which applied these drugs to him?
These drugs must have had a further devastating effect to his health and everybody could see this further deterioration of his health reflected in his his whole appearance. Despite this clear signal, the trial chamber didn't take any measure in favour of him, which might have shown any feeling of responsibility for his obviously further declining health.
Finally Milosevic felt forced to file a request at the tribunal to seek medical relief and treatment in Russia.
Those malicious forces responsible for the fact that this highly alarming medical report remained secret for such a prologed period also succeeeded in keeping it secret till after the tribunal had decided upon this request. On February 24, 2006, this request was denied bij the trial chamber.
If the trial chamber knew, at the moment of its ruling, about the content of this report, then there can be no other conclusion then that the tribunal's judges were part of a plot hatched against Milosevic, or even the insprirators of that plot.
Because then it would be sure that, despite that they were aware that Milosevic's life was seriously endangered by extremely harmful drugs in his blood, they deliberate would have ignored and concealed that.
If the judges of the trial chamber really would not have been familiar with the content of the report before it was given to Milosevic, nevertheless a number of questions remain.
The most urgent questions which, then, will remain are: why the judges refrained from insisting on getting acqainted with the content of this report as soon as possible an why they accepted that the release of this report remained forthcoming ?
Was this simply because the judges of the trial chamber were not interested in the health of Milosevic at all ?
Or was there something more behind it ?
Was it, maybe, more convenient to the tribunal's judges 'to be not wiser' and was it, consequently, a matter of tactics for the trail chamber's judges to abstain from insisting upon the release of the report?
So that they could hold a free hand to dismiss Milosevic's request for medical treatment in Moscow ?
Or were they even secretely tipped about the tendency the report and and was this enough knowledge for them to abstain from further insistence upon a full release ?
Bad faith by the trial chamber anyhow
Anyhow, it is a matter of fact that the trial chamber's judges have not taken any action in order to be able to take into account the content of this pending medical report in their pending decision upon Milosevic's request for medical treatment in Moscow.
This alone is already giving evidence of their bad faith with respect to Milosevic.
Refusal to allow treatment in Moscow
Further evidence of their bad faith with respect to Milosevic follows from the reasoning of their ruling, which states:
"The Chamber notes that the the Accused is currently in the latter stages of a very lengthy trial, in which he is charges with many serious crimes, and at the end of which, if convicted, he may face the possibility of life inprisonment. In these circumstances, and notwithstanding the guarantees of the Russian Federation and the personal undertaking of the Accused, the Trial Chamber is not satisfied that the first prong of the test has been met - that is , that it is the more likely than not that the Accused, if released, would return for continuation of his trial."
As already stated by Andy Wilcoxson, member of the Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Centre The Hague on the February 24, 2006 edition of his site www.slobodan-milosevic.org/hague.htm:
"What the tribunal is saying here is that the Russian Government can not be trusted to apprehend a 64-year-old man with a hart condition if he tried to escape. For all its empty rethoric about human rights, what the Hague Tribunal has shown by its decision is that it is perfectly happy to imperil a man's life just for the sake of politics."
This was written by Andy Wilcoxson, not realizing that he really forecasted by this Milosevic's death only two weeks later.
Earlier the tribunal allowed people accused to go back to Kosovo and Montenegro. Like, for instance, Pavle Strugar for a hip replacement surgery. Why it has more trust in the government of Montenegro or the 'interim administration' of Kosovo than the Russian Federation, which has given its word to return Milosevic, is not explained, but the insult to a permanent momber of the Security Council is inescapable.
The day after his death a report posted on the official website of the Russia Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated:
"Russian doctors were ready to offer him due assistance and the Russian authorities guaranteed the fulfillment of all related ICTY requirements. Unfortunately, despite our guarantees the tribunal refused to give Milosevic a chance to get treatment in Russia."
On March 15, 2006, the head of the Russian medical team, which had been prepared to treat him in Moscow, Leo Bokeria, member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, declared at a press conference in the Hague:
"Ãf Milosevic was taken to any specialised Russian hospital, the more so to such a stationary medical institution as ours, he would have been subjected to coronographic examination, two stents would be made, and he would have lived for many long years to come. A person has died in our contemparary epoch, when all the methods to treat him were available and the proposals of our country and the reputation of our medicine were ignored."
And:
"Ãt's a great regret that they did not heed our numerous appeals during examination. The point is that a man who had suffered from a complex illness and the heart and vascular system was not examined adequately, and thus naturally he could not be cured. If he had had a coronary arteriography...then of course he would have undergone surgery or a bypass and he would be alive".
Finally top Russian heart specialist Bokeria said he believed the right medical examinations of Milosevic could have prevented his death.
Deliberate delay of the release of the medical reporting - more questions
If the trial chamber's judges really didn't know anything about the content of the medical report which revealed the drugs in his blood, it must be concluded that those malicious forces who were after Milosevic's physical destruction must have deliberately delayed the release of this report. In order to prevent that their positive knowledge that Milosevic's life was seriously endangered would became common.
After all, there is no denying the fact that the release of this ominous report was delayed for two months. And, considering the highly alarming content and the fact that the report even had to deal with a life-threatening situation for Milosevic, it must be held for sure, unless still the opposite would be evidenced, that this was done deliberately.
So if it were not the trial chamber's judges who spearheaded this final conspiracy against Milosevic's life, than other tribunal official must have been responsible for that.
According to Holthuis, the tribunal's registrar in his above-mentioned official statement, the trial chamber of the tribunal also received the report only March 7, 2006, but without taking any action.
So why not ?
If the trial chamber's judges would have been trustful, they of course would have taken action immediately.
The more because their daily experience with Milosevic and the fact that they simply must have been aware that he was in a growing bad health.
But no alarm, no action from the trial chamber's judges after they got familiar with the content of this report.
Instead, they did nothing at all.
They only silenced the very existence of this report, and its very alarming content.
Milosevic pointed out the existence of the report to the outside world, not the tribunal
For it also should be stressed that it was not the tribunal which finally released the existence of this highly disturbing medical report, and, consequently, the existence of these highly worrying medical facts, but Milosevic.
Through a letter, a cry for help to the Russian government, which become public only after his death.
So the existence of this medical report became only public after the text of a handwritten letter emerged, dated March 8, send by Milosevic to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and asking for active steps by the Russians in order to bring about a medical treatment for him in Russia.
This letter stated, as far as relevant:
“I think that the persistence, with which the medical treatment in Russia was denied, in the first place is motivated by the fear that through careful examination it would be discovered that there were active, wilful steps taken, to destroy my health throughout the proceedings of the trial, which could not be hidden from Russian specialists.
In order to verify my allegations, I´m presenting you a simple example which you can find in the attachment. This document, which I received on March 7, shows, that on January 12th (i.e. two months ago), an extreme strong drug was found in my blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy, although I never used any kind of antibiotic during this 5 years that I´m in their prison.
(..)Also the fact that doctors needed 2 MONTHS (to report to me) can´t have any other explanation than we are facing manupulation. (emphasis added by the author). In any case, those who foist on me a drug against leprosy can´t treat my illness; likewise those from which I defended my country in times of war and who have an interest to silence me.”
Not directly being poisoned doesn't mean that Milosevic was not deliberately killed
At the autopsy performed by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) it was established that Milosevic died as a result of a cardiac arrest and that there were no traces of drugs in his blood.
However, as far as the results of this autopsy are considered reliable, this only proves that he was not directly poisoned at the eve of his death.
But this outcome, in no way, establishes that there were not, in an earlier stage, deliberate efforts to undermine his health.
In order to imperil, step by step, his life.
Alarming signals in November 2002
Already in 2002 there had been alarming signals that Milosevic deliberately received drugs which were damaging his fragile health.
On 23 November 2002 the leading Dutch Newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported, titled “Milosevic got wrong medicine”, as far as relevant here:
“In the Scheveningen prison Slobodan Milosevic was given the wrong medicine, causing his blood pressure to rise very quickly. This was why at the beginning of this month the trial against the former president of Yugoslavia was supended. Sources within the tribunal have confirmed this. However a spokesman for the Tribunal denies that mistakes were made. He refuses to discuss the issue further on grounds that “This is about the privacy of the defendant.”
On 18 November 2002 a cardiological report was handed over to Milosevic, resulting from a medical examination on November 15th, which stated inter alia:
“PATIENT HISTORY
In recent weeks during trial again steep blood pressure up
to around 220/120 to 130 mmHg. The patient had no other
complains related to this. I am now asked to make a
prognosis regarding Mr. MILOSEVIC´s blood pressure and
determine whether the patient is still fit to stand
trial.”
And further, under the paragraph “Discussion”:
“During the trial again strong increase in blood pressure.
Most likely a combination of an existing tendency to
hypertension and the mental pressure of the trial.”
This all was going on exactly in a time period that the prosecutor was vehemently making fresh attempts to convince the trial chamber that it was urgently needed to force Milosevic to accept counsel and to usurp his right to defend himself.
In order to silence him.
So in view of this purpose there were, at that very moment, good reasons to deteriorate his health and to cause a situation that his blood pressure got persistently out of hand.
In order to bring him into a state of health which would it make impossible to him to conduct his own defence.
Alarming signals in August 2004
Two years later, the prosecutor did again her utmost to drive Milosevic out of his own defence. And, instead, to make Kay his spokesman in court, while Milosevic again furiously opposed this attempt to move him out.
During his inspired plea against these renewed infamous attempts in the court session of September 1, 2004, Milosevic stipulated that he was fit enough to continue his own defence and, subsequently, stressed the incident mentioned hereafter:
“Therefore I wish to reiterate: My right to defend myself
is something that I will neither accept having diminished
nor will I ever waive it. Please bear that in mind.
And you can reach your own decisions, but I receive the
medicaments given to by your people, your employees.
What is happening here, I don´t know, but I can bring the
whole floor of the Detention Unit here to testify what
happened when the food I had was exchanged with the food
of the person across the passageway, and there was a big
to-do about setting things right, although the food
apparently was the same. It appeared to be the same. And I
did not raise the issue. I don´t know what was going on.
But please be kind enough to bear in mind that when, for
three years, they have been saying one thing and now
suddenly they turn around and say something else, I am
right in having suspicions. My suspicions may or may not
be justified, but they are well grounded.”
(Trial transcripts September 1, 2004 - pages 32351 to
32351)
The last remark was regarding his doctors, who had always stated, untill that very moment, that he was enough fit to defend himself, but now had taken the opposite position.
And again, also that specific period of this incident was a crucial one in the attempts of the prosecutor to topple Milosevic´s own defence.
And this time the Prosecutor succeeded: Kay has been installed as counsel.
But even this attempt finally failed, because, as already pointed out, the process threatened to fizzle out since the witnesses refused to show up.
And so the tribunal and the prosecutor were forced again to back down.
And, grinding their teeth, they were forced to re-establish Milosevic's right to conduct his own defence.
So there was only one way left to silence Milosevic.
An ultimate and definitive one.
Legal steps against the tribunal's officials
Over the recent years I have acted repeatedly on Milosevic’s behalf. In trials to defend his fundamental human rights within the Dutch legal order. In that context, he has empowered me to take whatever steps were necessary at a given moment. That was the case with the trials against the Dutch State after his kidnapping to The Hague, the proceedings against the then 'amicus curiae' Wladimiroff, against Kay, who threatened to usurp his right of defense, etc. Similarly, legal steps will be taken against the relevant tribunal officers, judges as well as prosecutors, on account of the cruel and inhuman treatment in the context of the Anti-Torture Treaty, a cruel and inhuman treatment by, at least, denying Milosevic, a sick man whose life was in danger for years, the necessary medical care. And by not giving him the support that was necessary, as was evident by the state of his health for years.
The tribunal's officials have protected themselves with a broad immunity from prosecution. But acts contrary to the Convention against Torture are excluded.
Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen
