Samizdata

The Milosevic trial in the Hague is having trouble due to the fact most of the Kosovo war crimes evidence was gathered by western intelligence operatives, rather than independent investigators. However even if that part of the charges against him collapses, he will not be able to stonewall his way out of the charges relating to Croatia and Bosnia.

Nevertheless, I must say that I have never thought the Hague trials were either legitimate or, more importantly, sensible. To paraphrase Talleyrand, they are worse than a crime, they are a mistake.

For Serbia to recover from the monstrous era that the entire former Yugoslavia is emerging from, it needs to go through a process similar to the de-nazification Germany went through after World War Two. It must face its own history and that is not achieved by putting The Demon on trial in the Netherlands. He did not act alone and whole sections of Serbian society must face up to that fact.

The place Slobodan Milosevic should have gone on trial for mass murder and other war crimes was in Serbia because then, and only then, can Serbian society itself drive a stake through the heart of its own darkness. There are a lot of good people in Serbia who are quite capable of doing just that.

Of course this could have been achieved another way too: like Mussolini, Slobodan Milosevic, his vile hellish wife, most of his adult family and about fifty senior ministers, police chiefs and generals could have been strung up on meat hooks as a lesson to future generations. That would have worked too. It might not be pretty but it would have been justice.