Tears, flowers for Milosevic as body returns to Serbia
Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic returned home one last time, his body in a coffin, to an emotionally charged reception from supporters ahead of a funeral in his birthplace.
Hundreds of people chanted his name, wept or threw red roses as his coffin was heaved out of a plane at Belgrade airport, draped with a Serbian flag and driven slowly to a city hospital morgue.
"Slobo! Slobo!", they sang. "Slobo rise up! Slobodan hero!" others shouted, in what was as much a welcome home after four years on trial abroad as a last farewell.
Milosevic will be buried Saturday in his home town Pozarevac, 70 kilometers (43 miles) southeast of Belgrade, a week after he was found dead in his prison cell at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
The plane carrying his coffin, wrapped in a protective cover, touched down mid-afternoon on a regular flight from Amsterdam.
Officials from his Socialist Party (SPS) stepped forward when the body was lowered onto a conveyor. One draped a Serbian flag over the casket, a second placed red roses on top.
Outside the airport the crowd swelled to hundreds. Inside the terminal one woman bore a placard saying, "Heroes do not die, they go into history".
As the van inched its way out people tried to touch it, or threw roses and other flowers.
Milosevic's son Marko, who had picked up his father's body, flew to Moscow, where he has been living for several years.
Serbian authorities said Milosevic, who died while standing trial for some of the worst war crimes in modern European history, would be given none of the trappings of a state funeral. But his party vowed to put the coffin on public display.
Senior SPS official Milorad Vucelic said it would be on show at Belgrade's communist-era Revolution Museum during Thursday and Friday.
On Saturday the funeral cortege will be given a send-off from the front of the federal parliament and head toward Pozarevac.
There, according to a family source quoted by Serbia's RTS television, his body will be laid to rest under a century-old linden tree in the large yard of the family property.
A divisive figure who inspired both loyalty and revulsion in the country he once ruled with an iron hand, Milosevic died of a heart attack while on trial for genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes for his role in the brutal Balkans conflicts of the 1990s.
The final legal hurdle for the funeral was removed Tuesday when a district court revoked the arrest warrant for his widow, Mira Markovic, on minor fraud charges, meaning she could return for the first time in three years.
Analysts say that by agreeing to a funeral, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica was saving his fragile coalition, which relies on the SPS for votes, from collapse.
But victims of the Milosevic regime were furious.
"There are thousands of people who have lost their relatives in the wars... who have fled the country, who have lost their dignity," said Sreten Petrovic, a court clerk who lost his job in 1996 because of his views on Milosevic.
"And now they are talking about a 'dignified' funeral. For whom?
"For the man who has never visited a mother who lost her child in the war, who ordered the beatings and murders of his opponents?"
Earlier, Russian doctors in The Hague said that they "totally agreed" with official conclusions that Milosevic died of a heart attack.
"We totally agree with the results of the autopsy," Leo Bokeria, who headed the Russian mission, told AFP. "This is typical of sudden cardiac death."
Moscow, where the Russian parliament called Wednesday for an international inquiry into the death, sent four doctors to The Hague to examine the autopsy results because of swirling rumours over the circumstances.
Momir Bulatovic, a former president of Serbia's junior partner Montenegro, said Milosevic "was deeply convinced that he was being poisoned."
"Until his last breath, he was preparing his defence, something that cannot be said for someone who plans to commit suicide," said Bulatovic, who visited Milosevic three days before his death to discuss testimony on his behalf.
A Dutch toxicologist who examined Milosevic's blood alleged Monday that he deliberately took a drug in order to neutralise heart medication and be flown to Moscow for treatment.
AFP
