His Day In Court

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It's worth remembering that for all his destructive desires, Osama bin Laden hasn't wreaked anything like the mayhem Milosevic is accused of. The ex-President is charged with responsibility for the deaths of 300,000 non-Serbs and the expulsion of millions from their homelands, starting in Sept. 21, 1991, when Serb forces shot 11 Croats in the town of Dalj, and ending in May 25, 1999, when eight ethnic Albanians were killed during the forced evacuation of the village of Dubrava/Lisnaje.

In the legal terms of the three indictments, that adds up to 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the rules of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention during the decade of wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The charges are a litany of persecution, extermination, murder, torture, inhumane acts, wanton destruction, deportation and forcible transfer. They accuse Milosevic, as the "dominant political figure" in Serbia, of orchestrating a "joint criminal enterprise" to cleanse non-Serbs from vast swaths of territory to leave an ethnically pure nation.

There is only one formal count of genocide, in Bosnia: it's the gravest offense on the war crimes books but the hardest to prove. Prosecutors must show Milosevic knowingly intended to wipe out, in whole or in part, an ethnic or religious group — Bosnia's Croats and Muslims. "Unless you've got an accused saying, 'Yes, I had the intent, and I had the ability to do it,'" says deputy prosecutor Graham Blewitt, "you can only submit evidence that will enable the judges to infer that's what was in the accused's mind." Most of the charges fit under the less demanding "crimes against humanity" statutes. The maximum sentence is the same for all the charges: life in prison.

Originally, the jurists in Trial Chamber III wanted to try Milosevic first on the Kosovo campaign and later for Bosnia and Croatia. But an appeals court two weeks ago accepted Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's argument that all three were part of "one strategy, one scheme" and that witnesses, once revealed, might be intimidated not to appear again. So there will be one trial, expected to conclude by late 2003.