His Day In Court

When case IT-02-54 is finally heard at the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague this week, it will mark a moment many despaired would ever come. The Serb strongman and former President of Yugoslavia who pre-sided over a decade of mass murder and mayhem across the Balkans seemed untouchable for so long, and then became almost forgotten as the world's attention fixed on a new global villain. Yet Milosevic will now have to sit each day in an austere courtroom, flanked by two U.N. guards, to answer to charges of crimes against humanity — even if he does remain defiant as ever.

Normal trials follow a prescribed, orderly path. But no one knows what to expect in this one — a test case for international justice, the first trial of a head of state. The prosecution must convict Milosevic not just in the eyes of three sitting judges but also in the court of world opinion. Yet never has the Hague tried a defendant so uncooperative. Milosevic seems determined to make the proceedings a spectacle of courtroom subversion, refusing to recognize the tribunal, refusing to enter a plea, refusing to select defense lawyers, refusing even to wear headphones to hear the proceedings in Serbian.

In every pre-trial appearance, Milosevic has responded with political diatribes. He has labeled the charges against him "absurd" and "monstrous," the prosecutor a NATO mouthpiece, the court a "retarded seven-year-old." He has called himself a peacemaker who's on trial to cover up NATO aggression against a sovereign country. The rants have led presiding Judge Richard May to cut off Milosevic's microphone. Milosevic has dropped hints that he might stage a grand scene by calling a parade of Western leaders to testify, starting with former U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It will be up to the three judges, who also comprise the jury — Britain's brisk, outspoken May, scholarly Patrick Robinson of Jamaica and South Korea's quiet O-Gon Kwon — to make sure the whole thing doesn't descend into farce.

Most Serbs who watch will be in for a shock. Whether they accept the tribunal or dismiss it, says Sonja Biserko, president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Belgrade, "We are going to be forced to confront things that haven't been discussed until now. The horror of the crimes will become self-evident." And the government of President Vojislav Kostunica may face dissent from within as the misdeeds of insiders — many of them still in office — are publicly aired for the first time and new witnesses are called upon to testify.