Indictment Correct, Trial Impossible
Former Chief Prosecutor, ICTY and ICTR*
This chapter identifies the difficulties confronting the participants in the trial—judges, defendant, and prosecutors—as the main point of criticism and cause for the trial’s unsatisfactory termination. What role did the judges’ prior experience in conducting trials play? How did the defendant’s self-representation affect the trial? Could the Prosecution have proceeded differently and presented evidence in a more efficient way? Answering those questions leads to the conclusion that in spite of a correct indictment, under the circumstances the conduct of a fair and expeditious trial was put at risk. Milošević’s self-representation did not comply with the criteria of a fair defense, while the time-consuming procedure and the dreary, sometimes unnecessary presentation of evidence prolonged the trial in such a way that one is tempted to say: Milošević’s death, after more than four years, put the trial out of its misery.
When I arrived at the Tribunal to lead the Prosecution in September 1999, Milošević was not being actively investigated for crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia, but only for those in Kosovo. The Kosovo indictment has been issued earlier that year, while that conflict was ongoing. At that time there had been enough evidence in the Kosovo investigation to obtain a confirmation of the indictment against Milošević. However, after my arrival I was advised that the evidence of crimes committed in Kosovo that had been collected was not yet sufficient to obtain a full conviction at trial. I therefore decided to continue the investigation in order to finalize the case.
I also began to look at the question of expanding the indictment to include Bosnia and Croatia. I consulted with my senior staff—including the Deputy Prosecutor, chief legal advisor, and others—but they did not want to investigate the crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia, even though Milošević’s main criminal responsibility was evident in those two cases. They said that because he was still president of the FRY, he would never be transferred to the Tribunal, and it would therefore be an unnecessary workload.* In fact we were very busy with ongoing cases, with some accused in detention.
After I had examined all the evidence just coming from other investigations and trials, in spite of these views I decided to open the investigation against Milošević for the crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia. I persuaded my staff with the argument that we ought first to collect all the evidence available from other cases and then fully investigate the crime base in Bosnia and Croatia. In the meantime, we were also working to obtain access to Belgrade to investigate Milošević’s criminal responsibility at its source. My aim was to be ready if and when Milošević would be arrested and transferred to the ICTY, which did come to pass later on. We therefore started active investigation.
The investigation was enormous and enormously complex. The acts in question occurred in three different jurisdictions: Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo (still de jure part of Serbia though outside Belgrade’s control since June 1999). Collecting key evidence and recruiting meaningful insider witnesses required investigative and diplomatic work in a fourth jurisdiction, Serbia, where men who had ordered and committed war crimes were still working in the SDB, the VJ and the criminal networks with which these governmental organs had been interlocked.
At that time we were not able to investigate in the FRY: We had no office, no access to archives, and we could not even physically enter the country. So all our investigations were directed toward Bosnia and Croatia, and focused essentially on the crime base, which meant interviewing witnesses and survivors and searching for objective facts. However, we could not investigate the direct responsibility of Milošević because the most important evidence for that was in Belgrade, to which we had no access. Furthermore, we did not have any insider witnesses who were disposed to testify at that time—although the original strategy with the Kosovo indictment had been to leverage insider witnesses.†
Still, there was another possibility: We could try to acquire evidence against Milošević through plea agreements and cooperation in other cases. For example, the Croatian Serb leader Milan Babić was cooperating, which was very important for collecting evidence against Milošević in the Croatia case.‡ And so, slowly—because he was still president of the FRY and would not be transferred to the Tribunal anytime soon—we began to investigate Milošević. It was not until the autumn of 2001 that the Trial Chamber confirmed indictments against him for Croatia and Bosnia.1
Outside the Prosecution few knew or understood the challenges that arose during the preparations of the Milošević trial: the complexities of the case, Milošević’s tactics and antics during the pretrial phase, clashes of personality and culture within the office, difficulties recruiting insider witnesses and securing the testimony of high-ranking foreign leaders and diplomats, the obstruction by Koštunica and his supporters—all these factors tested the mettle of the team’s members. But we achieved it.
Apart from the practical and political difficulties of investigating, the ICTY statute—in particular the ways it described participation in crimes2—also posed a problem and led to further discussions with my senior staff. The statute’s provisions worked well enough for the immediate perpetrators of crimes, generally the lower-ranking shooters, but were not well suited to deal with the way senior political figures participated in those same crimes. We did not maintain that Milošević personally ordered individual atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia; rather we argued that he devised a broad criminal plan at a strategic level and implemented it, using his authority as president of Serbia and later of the FRY.
In the end, we decided to apply the doctrine of “common purpose,” which the Tadić Appeals Chamber had accepted3 and which became known as JCE. This had proved an effective method of prosecuting high-level perpetrators who participated in crimes at a strategic level.4 All this discussion consumed a lot of time, but it was extremely important for me to find the right approach and persuade all my collaborators that this actually was the best solution.
Our principal strategy for the trial was to join the three indictments, relying on a JCE theory whose unifying element was a plan to establish a Greater Serbia.5 This decision was not only strategic, but also aimed to speed up the trial: fewer witnesses would be needed, the verdict would be consistent, the Accused himself would benefit from it in terms of fairness and expediency, and in general joinder would contribute to greater judicial economy. As Boas and Mégret discuss in great detail, the Trial Chamber only accepted the motion in part, denying it for Kosovo, but the Appeals Chamber ordered joinder of all three indictments.6
There were many other discussions within my Office concerning the particular charges to bring in the Milošević case. This was not only a question of establishing Milošević’s authority, but of characterizing his responsibility. For example, the crimes committed at Srebrenica were properly characterized as genocide, a view that had been confirmed by the Appeals Chamber,7 and if Milošević were involved there, as we believed he was, we had to consider whether to qualify his involvement as genocide.
There was evidence that Milošević had logistically and financially supported Ratko Mladić, Colonel General of the VRS, and Radovan Karadžić, President of the RS from 1992 to 1996. There was also considerable evidence that Mladić and Karadžić had gone to Belgrade to discuss these matters with Milošević, who sent them material support to help conduct the war against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.
Of course we did not have a “smoking gun” that would have proved Milošević’s participation in those crimes—including the genocide at Srebrenica—nor could we reasonably count on finding one, but I was sure that we would find enough evidence to corroborate the indictment; so, at the end of many discussions, I decided to put genocide in the indictment. My main strategic argument was that we would continue the investigation, and I was convinced that, once we got access to Belgrade, we would find the further proofs we needed.
In addition, I had an institutional reason for proceeding with the genocide charge. I felt it could not be possible that a single person—in this case me, the Prosecutor—could decide that Milošević was innocent, which would have been the effective consequence had I not insisted on including genocide in the indictment. My job as Prosecutor was to put forward the strongest case possible, including through the framing of the charges, and it must be the Chamber that decided if Milošević was guilty or not; this could not be the Prosecutor’s responsibility. We had prima facie evidence of genocide, and I was therefore duty-bound to present the charges to the Trial Chamber to judge. I informed all my senior trial attorneys that I would not allow a prosecutor to preempt the judges and make the final decision that Milošević was not guilty of genocide or of complicity in the events at Sarajevo and Srebrenica. The same reasoning led us to include many representative municipalities in the indictments in order to be as inclusive as possible, not only to give the case every chance to succeed but also to protect victims’ right to justice.
I feel this approach was ultimately vindicated by events at trial. After the Prosecution rested, the Amici Curiae asked the Tribunal to declare Milošević innocent on a number of counts (under the Rule 98 bis procedure, which Nielsen and Waters discuss), but the Tribunal decided that there was enough evidence to maintain each charge—including the accusation of genocide—and hold them over to the defense phase.8 This decision was very important and confirmed my view that arguments for including genocide were strong and merited a full hearing at trial.
Thus, although there were considerable practical, political, and legal obstacles to a single, expanded indictment covering Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia, my staff and I confronted those challenges and ultimately produced a plausible, defensible indictment that, if properly pursued and heard at trial, could have led to conviction in a fair proceeding.
Despite beginning with a serviceable and defensible indictment, however, the trial encountered significant obstacles. Indeed the judges, the Prosecution, and the Accused faced difficulties that ultimately undermined the conduct of the trial.
The judges confronted a number of obstacles, some of their own making and some a function of the environment in which they operated: The hybrid rules of procedure, the judges’ lack of experience, their exaggerated tolerance of Milošević’s behavior, and their passivity all contributed to delay and distraction.
The Milošević trial was too long, and steps should have been taken to shorten it considerably—no trial should last for four years.* The main factor contributing to the trial’s length was the Rules of Procedure and Evidence or RPE, which were primarily based on the common law system.9 This common law orientation meant that the Chamber could not intervene as robustly in the trial and that much more time was needed to present evidence. In the course of the trial several rules deriving from the civil law system were introduced, with an eye to speeding up proceedings,10 but the trial was still too long. A comprehensive revision of the RPE to reconcile significant differences between the civil law and common law approaches to criminal procedure could have shortened the trial; in particular this would have made it less necessary to prove again the same facts that already been proved in other trials and hear the same witnesses over and over again. Of course the Milošević Chamber was not directly responsible for the RPE, but because the judges of the ICTY were collective authors of their own RPE, they bear much of the responsibility for the Rules’ tendency to promote extravagantly long trials such as Milošević.
A judge’s past experience in conducting trials is of great importance, and this factor presented a general problem not only in Milošević, but in all cases, because of the novelty of the ICL process and the consequent relative lack of experience of all the judges in ICL’s particular culture and context. In general, an experienced judge will find it easier to be firm and confident in his decisions, without losing time on less important details; this is even more true in an international court such as the ICTY, where many of the issues are entirely novel. However, for a judge with less practical experience it is even more difficult to adopt a firm attitude and not lose time in discussions; he will want to listen to every possible argument, and be overly cautious in taking decisions. An accused will naturally perceive the judge’s hesitation and take advantage of it. In general, efforts must be made to ensure the recruitment of competent and experienced judges—tribunals need more experienced criminal judges and fewer legal scholars.
In Milošević, the judges’ relative inexperience was of particular importance because it was the first time a head of state had appeared before an international tribunal since Nuremberg. Milošević was treated with exaggerated respect during the trial. At the beginning of the hearings he would always be asked if he was feeling well, if he was comfortable with the conditions in prison, and if he agreed to stay in court and attend the trial. So much time spent talking about the well-being of the Accused: to me—as the effective representative of the victims—this overly solicitous attitude toward Milošević seemed like a lack of respect for the victims and ridiculed their horrible suffering.* All these issues should be discussed between the parties—if needed—outside the courtroom, but Milošević refused, and with no appointed defense lawyer it was impossible to do so without him. Whatever contributions the Registry’s Pro Se Office made to ease these interactions, which Anoya describes in her chapter, they were not sufficient to mitigate this problem.
This level of solicitousness and deference continued throughout the hearings. The judges were very careful and attentive with him; I recall that the presiding judge, Judge May, once mentioned in court that he allowed Milošević more than he would have allowed a professional defense lawyer because Milošević was defending himself. For me this constituted one of the weaknesses in the attitude of the judges because it allowed Milošević broader scope to conduct a political defense and to prolong the trial. I remember that Milošević, when speaking to the presiding judge would call him simply “Mr. May” in a deprecating way.11 One time, I told Judge May that I would appreciate it if Milošević called him “president,” but in May’s opinion this was not of importance.
It was also a serious problem that the presiding judge did not intervene more in the trial. This was not necessarily a function of inexperience or a theoretical orientation; on the contrary, it was a cultural aspect that arose precisely because of the common law structure of the Tribunal and the common law experience of the presiding judge: Judge May was an English judge, and in the common law judges are not used to intervening much. But in the Milošević trial, this professional reticence would prove to be of great relevance, because Milošević did not defend himself in the customary manner of an English court: Instead he gave political speeches, which the judges did not intervene to stop. From the very beginning of the trial, the judges allowed him to make all the political speeches he wanted.
A lot of time was wasted through unnecessary discussions about procedural rules, resistance to admitting adjudicated facts, and overly generous tolerance of Milošević’s political speeches. With better time-management, the trial could have been shortened considerably.12
For example, in general, the Trial Chambers wasted an inordinate amount of time requiring that the Prosecution prove time and again that an armed conflict had occurred in Bosnia. By the time of the Milošević trial, this resulted in our having to re-prove the basic frame of the conflict as well as the individual incidents when the core of the case was a claim about a command structure reaching to Belgrade. A period of pretrial management by a more engaged and procedurally empowered Chamber would have allowed the judges to eliminate issues that were not contentious and to further narrow the issues for which direct oral testimony was required.*
The judges are certainly not the only one to blame for the length of the trial. My office and I also made strategic errors, and also confronted problematic obstacles that either lengthened the trial or weakened our case. Our “Kosovo-first” strategy did both these things, whereas our inability to develop a more assertive strategy on adjudicated facts, better manage witnesses and lengthy accusations, or win greater rights during the examination of witnesses are examples of procedural opportunities to shorten the trial that were missed.
The Trial Chamber decided that the trial would begin with the Kosovo case instead of following the chronological order of the events. I suspect that the Chamber was unhappy because it had lost in our appeal for joining the three cases and therefore denied our request to begin with the Croatia case.13 The strategy we would have preferred would have been to present the evidence chronologically and show the evolution of the JCE over time and across the three conflicts, but because the Chamber had decided to start with the Kosovo case—the last in time—this was not possible.
Another strategic error—this one attributable to the Prosecution, rather than the Chamber—was our decision to present evidence of the crime base first and then continue with evidence against the Accused. Instead we should have started with Milošević’s criminal responsibility, but it simply had not occurred to us.
The decision to begin with the crime base was a strategic error because it wasted time and suffused an event billed as the “trial of the century” with anticlimax. Viewers across the world—but especially people in Serbia and Kosovo—were expecting to see Milošević, the man most responsible for the destruction of Yugoslavia, face witnesses of his stature: diplomats, international negotiators, and, especially, former protégés who were prepared to testify against him. Instead, there appeared first a series of victims, some of them barely literate peasants and working people who were utterly disoriented outside of their home villages and neighborhoods, with no idea how to respond to the browbeating Milošević served up as cross-examination. Moreover, although these first witnesses were telling the truth about the key events they had experienced, they also started changing their earlier statements in ways that were not true, in particular denying knowledge of KLA activity;*14 this disastrously damaged their credibility. Recognizing these problems, we changed our strategy, but although it was not too late in terms of the forensic trial process, the damage to public opinion had already been done.
Just as the Chamber should have structured the trial to remove contentious issues and allow greater reliance on the work of other trials, the Prosecution should have insisted far more robustly that adjudicated facts be admitted. In this case, the Chamber could have decided that some facts that had already been objectively proved in other trials did not have to be proved again.15 I recognize that we were not particularly active in persuading the Chamber of the availability and importance of adjudicated facts, which was one of our errors as the Prosecution.
The three indictments—whether in their joined form or separately—contained an expansive list of counts and allegations against Milošević, which necessarily implied a long trial. A shorter indictment would have shortened the trial—though there are also costs to such streamlining.
In particular, reducing the charges could have been dangerous from the point of view of victims’ perceptions. The Prosecution was of course free to request that the charges be reduced, but the judges had also created a rule that allowed them to decide if the Prosecution had to drop a point of accusation or a witness;16 whatever benefits this may have had from the point of view of shortening the trial, many victims did not understand why a particular massacre was not important to the Tribunal. As the representative of the victims, the Prosecution must demand justice for all victims, not just some a selected few. Just as I felt that it was not the Prosecution’s place to preempt the Chamber’s adjudication of plausible genocide charges, I found this rule an interference with the independence of the Prosecution. A trial chamber should refrain from unilaterally shrinking complex leadership cases. Judicial decisions to remove counts arbitrarily may seriously undermine cases against high-ranking individuals.
Still, there were ways in which we in the Prosecution could have streamlined our own case, especially regarding witnesses. In the course of proving the crime base we interrogated a lot of witnesses to corroborate the incidents mentioned in the indictment. The difficulty arose from the broad range of charges, all of which required sufficient evidence, and the effectiveness of any given witness was often unclear until all the evidence was gathered. In the event, many witnesses testified to the same facts, using time that could have been saved with better management of how the crime base evidence was presented and a more careful selection of witnesses.
Part of the Prosecution strategy in developing the indictments was to find inside witnesses. We thought this would be critical to painting a picture of control from Belgrade, and although this was true, we did not fully recognize the risks accompanying inside witnesses. In the actual trial there were many hostile witnesses: Insiders often changed their stories when they took the stand and faced their old political taskmasters. A prominent example is the testimony of Radomir Marković, former head of the SDB, who upon cross-examination largely recanted his prior testimony.* This kind of switching was difficult to manage and we did not always have enough time to prepare, but partly it was a structural problem: The Tribunal’s rules bar the Prosecution from cross-examining its own insider witnesses and treating them, if necessary, as hostile witnesses.* Obviously, this rule should be revised.
The cross-examination of victim-witnesses is a serious problem in all trials. The victim-witness is suffering in the trial and has to retell and relive the horrible experiences while being attacked by the defense. As Prosecutor I intervened many times, but my objections were not always granted.17 Milošević was very talented in attacking witnesses: He could talk softly and in a friendly manner, and in this way sometimes achieved a substantive change in the victim’s testimony. I think he did this just to show his ability, not to defend himself—but whatever his motivations, the broader lesson I drew is that rules must be established to offer special protection for victims during cross-examination.
Milošević’s behavior in the courtroom contributed considerably to the length of the trial. The Chamber’s decision to recognize his right of self-defense gave him the freedom he needed to raise an overtly political defense. Beyond that, he managed to attack witnesses and cross-examine them in a way that hampered their credibility. But perhaps the most problematic difficulty connected with the Accused was his ill health, which constantly delayed the trial and ultimately contributed to its termination.
Milošević’s declaration that he would defend himself personally—without a defense lawyer—was made both in writing and orally during his first appearance for the Kosovo indictment in July 2001,18 and at the end of August the Chamber ruled for the first time that he was entitled to represent himself.19 Milošević clearly knew he could not defend himself successfully in a legal sense, because he did not even bother to mount a proper defense. Instead, as several other authors show in their chapters, Milošević chose to present a political defense, to speak directly to his constituents in Serbia, to exploit each trial day—and there were only three in a week—as an opportunity for political diatribe.* It did not have to be this way.
The Tribunal is clearly obliged to allow self-representation if an accused is ready and able to defend himself.20 This right is not absolute, however, and the Prosecution has consistently opposed each effort by an accused to defend himself, not only Milošević’s. But the particular circumstances of the Milošević trial—including his poor health and the complexity of the case—were compelling reasons to appoint defense counsel.
Even though Milošević chose to represent himself, the particular right of self-defense the ICTY afforded—drawn from the common law—actually shielded him from the Chamber’s full scrutiny. Under common law procedures that were copied in the ICTY Statute, an accused can only be interviewed as a witness if he agrees. It is possible that during a trial lasting months or even years, the accused does not ever have to directly answer questions about his actions. I consider cross-examination to be an important factor in judging an accused: The way he speaks and reacts to questions shows a lot and is of help for the evaluation. However, although Milošević certainly spoke a great deal during the trial, it always on his own terms, and always in his notional role as his own attorney.
Besides, with Milošević, it was not actually self-defense. What occurred was disguised as self-defense because only Milošević appeared in the courtroom, but in reality, he had a large team of lawyers working for him behind the scenes. In addition, because Milošević did not bother to argue legal points, the Tribunal appointed Amici Curiae, who, despite their name, primarily provided support to Milošević.21† This was a bastardization of the traditional practice that allows Amici to advise a court, and indeed the whole idea of self-defense as practiced at the ICTY seemed misconceived.
All of this suggests a need to revisit the right of self-defense in international trials. The ICTY Statute affords a right to self-defense—and so do other tribunals, as Anoya notes—but there is no principle in international law that requires this. Under civil law principles, someone who participated in the facts of the crime does not have the necessary distance to defend himself, and therefore must always have a lawyer. Had Milošević been tried before a court in Serbia, there would have been no question of his defending himself. Although the statutory nature of the right at the ICTY is unavoidable, the Chamber has had many problems with self-defense, and is now less doctrinaire in applying the rule, as its conduct in Šešelj and Karadžić suggests.‡
Milošević’s self-defense was even more problematic because Milošević defended himself in an exclusively political manner. In the written submissions, his lawyers defended him on legal issues. But orally, he only advanced a political defense. He did not recognize the Tribunal as an authority competent to judge him. So when he spoke, he did not speak to the “false tribunal,” as he called it,22 but to the Serbs.
Milošević’s defense consumed inordinate amounts of courtroom time, not only because it enabled him to present a stream of irrelevant political and historical questions and arguments, but also because we, from the Prosecution side, found ourselves without any interlocutor: There was no objective counsel with whom to stipulate undisputed facts or sort out technical questions. This left it to the trial judges to handle mundane issues, including the minutiae of Milošević’s treatment in the detention unit, in open court rather than outside.
At one level, this was Milošević’s own strategic choice, and he took the risks of that choice. However, in important ways, his choice damaged the trial as a process and even vitiated his right to a fair trial. Because Milošević was not defending himself against the facts, in a sense he was not provided with a fair defense.23 Until almost the end of the Bosnia phase he had not presented any evidence in his defense—because he did not want to legitimate the Tribunal, and because his aim was entirely different. If he had had a lawyer to defend him, his defense would have been based on the facts and not on political issues.
If the Trial Chamber had shown resolve in this regard from the beginning and imposed defense counsel (as they eventually did, but only at the beginning of the defense phase two year later*), Milošević would have had to concede, though he surely would have resorted to some fallback strategy to politicize the trial. In my opinion, the judges’ concerns over a fair trial were exaggerated and created a situation that was unfair to everyone—including Milošević, however much he may have preferred it. The judges’ lack of resolve was a weakness Milošević exploited from the start and throughout the whole trial.
Milošević’s aim was to destroy the credibility of witnesses, not to defend himself. During cross-examinations, Milošević got the chance to attack witnesses in many ways, particularly victim-witnesses; they often felt inferior when they stood before their former president, and he took advantage of their weakness. Milošević was very clever in approaching the witnesses: sometimes he acted very carefully—almost softly—but playing with his authority, with the aim of making the witness change his statement.† Other times he attacked the witnesses aggressively, depending on the person and how much he knew about them—and he often knew a lot. Sometimes Milošević succeeded in getting Prosecution witnesses to in effect testify for and not against him; he was very talented in cross-examination, though of course he also had—behind doors—that team of lawyers working for him. I must say that from a professional point of view, I admired his interrogation technique: The way he made witnesses change their statements was fascinating to watch.‡ Of course we did everything we could to ensure that our witnesses would not be intimidated, but the Chamber did not always support us.24 Many of the witnesses were also afraid of the power Milošević still wielded, and witnesses were legitimately concerned that they might face repercussions for their testimony.
Milošević’s poor health was a decisive factor in delaying completion of the trial, and also gave him a strategic advantage in controlling the schedule of hearings. Milošević suffered from high blood pressure, and whenever he did not feel well, proceedings would be interrupted, his blood pressure would be measured, and the trial would continue only if he were declared fit enough. This had real effects on the flow of the trial: we could only work half a day three times a week because of his medical condition. The Court found itself placing new limits upon the Prosecution’s ability to present its case. Milošević’s high blood pressure would sometimes prompt the Trial Chamber to ease the burden upon him by limiting the numbers of hours of testimony each week and often by recessing the trial for days at a time.
Nor was this an entirely natural process. Milošević was obliged to take pills against high blood pressure, but he disregarded the advice of his doctors and tampered with his medicines, apparently by receiving special, unauthorized doses of rifampicin during privileged visits, despite attempts to monitor and control his medicines.* These drugs reduced the effect of his blood pressure medicine, which drove up his blood pressure and on occasion prompted his doctors to advise the judges that he would be temporarily unable to withstand the rigors of the open court. In effect this allowed him to conduct the trial as he liked, and indeed, the Prosecution team had the sense that Milošević’s blood pressure seemed to rise just before the appearance of witnesses who had the potential to be especially damaging.25 Whatever the precise contours of his illness, it unquestionably prolonged the trial; instead of four years, it could have been finished in one, if we could have worked five days a week.
The official report says that Milošević died a natural death.26 But of course, in such a case there remains always an open question. As he was taking different medications, one explanation is that, as discussed above, he knowingly altered prescriptions and dosages and this contributed to his death.27 Shortly before his death he had requested provisional release for medical care in Russia, but this request was denied, and it was around this time that he likely stopped taking the drugs that had counteracted his medicine.28 Milošević had dedicated medical staff to take care of him at all times29 and he had significant opportunities for free contact with the outside world;30 all this leaves room for many speculations about the cause of his death.
But whatever the cause of Milošević’s own demise, the real question that should concern us is the condition his trial was in before that biological event’s contingent intervention. In spite of a correct indictment, under the circumstances that prevailed the conduct of a fair and expeditious trial was put at risk. Milošević’s self-representation did not comply with the criteria of a fair defense or a proper trial, whereas the time-consuming procedure and the dreary, sometimes unnecessary presentation of evidence and the Chamber’s failure to take control of events prolonged the trial in such a way that one is tempted to say: Milošević’s death, after more than four years, put the trial out of its misery.