Bagging The Butcher

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So one of the top U.S. and European demands on the new Serbian leaders was for a sign that the bad old regime would be held accountable. To let men like Milosevic--or the officers around him who had been indicted by the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague--walk away from their crimes would tarnish the hard-won idea of international accountability. Last fall, even as the White House celebrated Milosevic's defeat, Washington sent a carrot-and-stick signal to Belgrade: Milosevic must be arrested by March 31 or millions in U.S. aid would be frozen, along with a big piece of U.S. goodwill. But in the past weeks the White House gave the Serbs some wiggle room. It wasn't necessary that Milosevic be sent to the Hague, simply that he be arrested as a start.

So last Friday night, the rumors of an imminent arrest began seeping out of Serbia. At about 2:30 the next morning, a white van loaded with special police units in stocking masks and jeans roared up to the leafy compound where the ex-strongman had been holed up since last fall. Hurling stun grenades, they burst past a knot of angry loyalists singing patriotic songs and vaulted the iron gates. (The Serbian army, which once strongly backed Milosevic, remained in its barracks.)

As in earlier confrontations, Milosevic put up a fight. This time the resistance resembled a gangster shoot-out, not a military standoff. An estimated 20 supporters, and a well-armed and reportedly well-lubricated bodyguard fired back at police, injuring two officers and forcing the raid back. Milosevic tried to put a smooth face on the affair by telling a local TV station he was relaxing with "comrades" and sipping coffee. Nothing, it seemed, could shake his expert skills as a liar. Later, seeming more desperate, he vowed to a police commander that he would not be taken alive. Another fib.

For a brief moment, it looked like a bad hostage standoff, the cheap fare of Southern California TV, was about to be played out in the Balkans. All day on Saturday, Milosevic and his minions remained squirreled away as the government formulated a plan and as TV cameras watched from a distance. In that vacuum, events spilled easily into farce. Loyalists, mostly elderly socialists for whom Milosevic represents patriotic Serbian ideals, built themselves a bonfire to ward off the chill, scrawling the names of their imagined enemies--Solana (Javier, the NATO Secretary-General), Klark (Wesley Clark, the retired U.S. general) and Monika (Lewinsky, presumably)--on logs before hurling them into the blaze. The supporters "love him with their heart and soul, not with Western money like these new leaders," hissed a spokeswoman--dressed in leopard coat and tight jeans--for Milosevic's wife.

But the love was not enough. Sunday morning the government tried again--and this time it was not rebuffed. The crowds that had filled the streets outside his house had evaporated overnight. A police caravan arrived at the house, and other than a few harmless gunshots reportedly fired off by Milosevic's overwrought daughter, there was little drama. The ex-strongman was bundled into a car and zipped to Belgrade's central jail, a 10-minute ride from his house that took just three on the empty morning streets.