UN closes book on Milosevic

A Belgrade court yesterday revoked an arrest warrant for the widow of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, clearing the way for her to return to Serbia for his funeral.

A spokeswoman for the district court, Ivana Ramic, told AFP the warrant against Mira Markovic had been withdrawn, but added that she would have to appear before a judge to face fraud charges on March 23.

The final hearing in case at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague lasted just a few minutes.

Presiding judge Patrick Robinson said the court regretted Milosevic's "untimely passing (which) deprived not only him but indeed all the interested parties of a judgement upon the allegations in the indictment."

Milosevic had been on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the conflicts in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Kosovo that together claimed more than 200,000 lives.

One of the main charges facing the former Belgrade strongman was over the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, considered a genocide and the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

Milosevic was the first former head of state to go before an international tribunal in what human rights organizations hailed as a great step forward in the fight against impunity.

His death of a heart attack Saturday at the age of 64 cut short a process lasting more than four years and involving hundreds of witnesses.

Only a few weeks remained for his defence, which Milosevic was mounting on his own behalf as he refused to recognise the court's legitimacy.

Marko Milosevic, the 33-year-old son of the late former strongman, arrived in Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on board a commercial Aeroflot flight from Moscow.