The Strange Death of Slobodan Milošević and Its Cover-Up by the ICTY

Part II

On Dec. 22, 2005, Geoffrey Nice, chief prosecutor during the Milošević trial, responded to the assigned counsel’s request by declaring, as he had done many times before, that Milošević wasn’t really ill—he was merely reacting to the accumulation of damaging evidence against him. “On 4 November 2005, the Accused was examined by a group of specialists instructed by him, who made unsolicited recommendations as to the future conduct of the trial,” Nice wrote. The word “instructed” suggested the specialists were taking instructions from Milošević and clearly impugned their integrity. As for “unsolicited” recommendations, well, Milošević had solicited them, as he was entitled to do in accordance with the ICTY’s own rules of detention. Rule 31 says, “Detainees may consult a doctor or dentist of their choice at their own expense…. The Commanding Officer shall not refuse a request for such consultations without reasonable grounds.”

It was all part of Milošević’s strategy, Nice explained, “aimed at preventing the trial from being brought to a timely conclusion.” Therefore, “control of these proceedings needs to be taken on the basis that this underlying strategy may or does lie behind every application of a procedural nature.” The court should, first, “find out what the true medical position is….There has been no definitive findings as to the Accused’s true medical condition, what treatment he requires and what the outcome of any treatment may be.” Second, the court “should proceed on the basis that this trial must go ahead as scheduled…with or without the Accused present in court.” Without the Accused present in court? When you are serving humanity, protecting human rights is the least of your concerns.

Amusingly, Nice berated Milošević for relying “upon his own medical experts, who have second-guessed the court’s appointed specialists and provided reports of their own.” Nice made this complaint in the same motion in which he demanded “full access” to Milošević’s medical records as well as “facilities to allow examination of the Accused by the Prosecution’s own medical experts.” Nice justified this request by saying that Milošević had “attempted to take this matter out of the Chamber’s hands. His medical condition is now being presented as an adversarial issue.” But it was Nice himself who had made Milošević’s health as an “adversarial issue.” It was Nice who had alleged that Milošević was faking ill health in order to derail the trial. Already back in Sept. 30, 2003, Nice had demanded access to Milošević’s medical reports. Back then, the presiding judge, Richard May, had rejected his request, saying, “We cannot have a party second guessing the Court’s doctors. It's quite out of—quite out of all proportion and propriety.”

In his new motion, Nice made the pitch that eventually was to form the basis of the court’s rejection of the release request. “There is no evidence to support a finding that the Accused requires medical treatment that cannot be provided in The Hague. If he wishes to be treated by specialists from Russia, then there may be no good reason why they may not treat him, alongside Dutch specialists, in The Hague.” Nice cited no medical or scientific opinion to support this claim. And, he continued,

There is no reason to believe that once in Russia, the Accused might not then be found unfit to travel for the purposes of return….The Accused has done all he can to thwart the proper functioning of this trial. He does not recognize or respect this court in any legal or substantive way. He has repeatedly refused to recognize the legitimacy of this Tribunal….The Accused’s attitude has stretched, not infrequently, to offensiveness to officials in the courtroom, well evinced by his referring to the Trial Chamber as part of a joint criminal enterprise.

Now, Milošević, unlike Nice or the judges, had been nothing if not polite to his courtroom adversaries. What Nice referred to as offensiveness was clearly a matter of serious difference of opinion on international law and was a key part of Milošević’s defense: that his trial by a NATO-financed, NATO-staffed and NATO-run court served to provide a post facto justification for NATO’s unprovoked aggression against Yugoslavia.

Then Nice declared, “No application for provisional release should even be entertained by the Trial Chamber unless the Accused first provides a personal guarantee recognizing the legality and legitimacy of the Tribunal, agreeing to submit to its jurisdiction, and undertaking to return. No such personal guarantee from this Accused could now ever be credible.” This was mind-boggling. Milošević had to renounce his beliefs, and essentially the basis of his defense, in order for the ICTY to permit him to receive medical treatment. However, even that would be no good because nothing Milošević said could possibly be believed.

A personal guarantee from Milošević wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on. And a guarantee from Russia wouldn’t be worth much more:

In the event that guarantees are provided by the Russian Federation, the Prosecution will argue that they do not provide sufficient assurance to the Trial Chamber that the authorities of the Russian Federation will arrest the Accused if he violates any of the conditions of his release.

It was clear that the prosecution would oppose Milošević’s application for provisional release, no matter what medical diagnosis was proffered or what guarantees issued. Significantly, despite Nice and del Ponte’s demands for more and more documentation about Milošević’s condition, they had singularly failed to challenge the diagnoses either of the independent specialists or of the Russian doctors. This didn’t stop del Ponte on Jan. 20, 2006, from asserting that the Russian Bokeria had failed to show that Miloševic could only “undergo the diagnostic treatments recommended, or any other treatment, in the Bakoulev Scientific Centre.” And, in any case, even if he did, he had failed to show that the center was “in a position to provide any security to the Accused to prevent his absconding.” Moreover, while the Russian Federation may have guaranteed that it would “provide security for Mr. Slobodan Milošević” at the Bakoulev center, it had not offered “any guarantees as to what security may be provided at the centre.”

Much as Nice had done, del Ponte disputed that any deterioration in Milošević’s condition had taken place. Del Ponte said that the application for provisional release failed to offer any evidence “to support a conclusive finding as to: 1) What alternative treatment may be required, if any, for the cardiovascular or any other condition. 2) Any link between the Accused’s hearing disorder and cardiovascular condition. 3) Any deterioration in the Accused’s cardiovascular condition.”

Finally, she declared,

the relief sought (release to a medical centre in Moscow) is manifestly disproportionate to its target (an amelioration in the Accused’s medical condition). There is no evidence to support a finding that treatment in Moscow as opposed to The Hague is necessary. There is no evidence to support a finding that the recommended diagnostic treatment, at the very least, may not be provided in The Hague, and that diagnoses may not be made, by the Accused’s own medical experts if necessary, with the Accused in detention in The Hague….There is…insufficient evidence to support a conclusion that the Accused’s present treatment is anything other than appropriate.

Del Ponte concluded by asserting, “the guarantees provided by the Russian Federation do not provide sufficient assurance to the Trial Chamber that the authorities of the Russian Federation will arrest the Accused if he violates any of the conditions of his release.” As for Milošević’s signed guarantee that he would return, it was not credible since Milošević “does not recognize the legitimacy of this Tribunal. Defiance of the Tribunal may be seen by some in Serbia and in the Russian Federation to be an heroic act. That is the environment in which this specious undertaking is given”

On Feb. 1, 2006, the prosecutors upped the ante, and revived a charge they had made before, though without having provided much in the way of evidence, namely, that Milošević was self-medicating. He was doing so, moreover, with the supposed connivance of the medical experts who had examined him on Nov. 4. The experts may have “advised the Accused on how to defeat his medical regime, or alternatively that they have all been misled by him.” Prosecutor Nice suggested that the Russian Federation be informed of Milošević’s manipulation of his health, because it

may lead the Federation to review and revoke its guarantees….How could any state offer guarantees about its ability to care for, or supervise the custody of a man against whom there is evidence of a determination to act contrary to medical advice?....The Russian Federation would…be horrified at the prospect of having the Accused in its custody and for him so to abuse his medical regime as to lose his life whilst in their custody, or to render himself so ill as to make return to The Hague impossible.

Rather menacingly, Nice asserted that “the Accused’s willful manipulation of his health provides further grounds for refusing the application for provisional release in that the Chamber will not be in a position to monitor what is now a stated and obvious risk: that the Accused may take his own life.” So there we have it: Nice was warning, a little more than a month before Milošević’s death, that he may commit suicide.

ICTY REJECTS PRESCRIBED COURSE OF TREATMENT

The ICTY’s Feb. 23, 2006, rejection of the assigned counsel’s provisional release request was no surprise. What was a surprise was the feebleness of the ICTY’s reasoning. As was often the case at the ICTY, the judges’ arguments amounted to little more than a regurgitation of the prosecutors’ arguments. Why it had taken the judges more than two months to reach their decision remained inexplicable.

The ICTY’s reasoning was as follows: First, Milošević had failed to show that he couldn’t receive in Holland the treatment that he would receive in Russia. According to the court,

Assigned Counsel have made no real attempt to demonstrate that the Accused’s medical needs cannot be met in the Netherlands. The Chamber considers that an application for provisional release on medical grounds cannot be granted unless such a showing is made. In this regard, the Trial Chamber accepts the submission of the Prosecution, that if the Accused wishes to be treated by specialists who are not from the Netherlands, such physicians may come here to treat him.[i]

Second, the ICTY couldn’t accept either Milošević’s written undertaking to return to The Hague after treatment or the Russian government’s commitment to deliver him there. Menacingly, not to say sadistically, the judges wrote:

The Chamber notes that the Accused is currently in the latter stages of a very lengthy trial, in which he is charged with many serious crimes, and at the end of which, if convicted, he may face the possibility of life imprisonment. In these circumstances, and notwithstanding the guarantees of the Russian Federation and the personal undertaking of the Accused, the Trial Chamber is not satisfied that…the Accused, if released, would return for the continuation of his trial.[ii]

Both of the grounds proffered were legally outrageous. How does one prove that one can’t receive medical treatment in one place as good as the one somewhere else? As is its wont, the ICTY had shifted the burden of proof onto Milošević.  It was a burden inherently impossible to meet. How can one prove there isn’t a hospital or a clinic somewhere in Holland that could treat Milošević? It was surely up to the prosecutors to show that Milošević could—and, more important, would—receive treatment in The Hague as good and as timely as the one on offer in Moscow. It was up to the prosecutors and the court to demonstrate that the Bakulev Center specialists would be able to travel to Holland, spend an extensive period of time there, take time away from their other patients, bring the requisite supporting staff with them, have all the necessary medical equipment at their disposal, have the resources to pay for all of this and count on the full cooperation of Dutch hospitals and doctors.

Moreover, if the ICTY judges had really wanted to know what kind of treatment the Moscow doctors proposed, and whether it would be available in The Hague, they could at any time have asked the doctors to come to The Hague and testify about this. Or they could have asked for written submissions. Then the judges could have asked the ICTY doctors or other Dutch medical experts to respond. Instead, the court dawdled for two months, doing very little other than entertaining various dark prosecutorial claims that Milošević was undermining his health and requesting to see more and more of Milošević’s medical records. 

As for the ICTY’s second reason for rejecting Milošević’s request, its outrageous and entirely inappropriate reference to Milošević’s facing the “possibility of life imprisonment,” it was no reason at all, merely typical ICTY arrogant bluster. The ICTY never felt it had any obligations toward anyone, not even the obligation of courtesy. The ICTY was openly calling the government of the Russian Federation untrustworthy. It had forgotten that, without the support of Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, there would have been no ICTY. In addition, the ICTY was being profoundly dishonest. It had insisted on written pledges from Milošević and the Russian government that he would return to The Hague after treatment. Then, when the written pledges duly arrived, the judges announced that they didn’t believe them. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that, in requesting these written commitments, the ICTY was simply cynically running out the clock.

The same trial chamber that, 18 months earlier, had invoked Milošević’s poor health to justify its decision to take away his right to represent himself just as he was about to begin presenting his defense, now made light of his health condition to justify its decision to deny him the medical treatment he sought.

The ICTY’s decision, though cruel and cynical, was not without lawyerly cunning. The court could have ruled that it suspected that Milošević was a hypochondriac and that he was using his health in order to evade justice. However, such a claim should not have been too hard to prove. The judges could have rounded up a few medical specialists, ordered a fresh examination and asked them point-blank: Was Milošević a malingerer? Armed with the doctors’ determination, the court would then have been able to speed up the trial or, once again, to impose an attorney. But this option was fraught with so much risk that it was a non-starter. After all, the ICTY’s own doctors had diagnosed Milošević to be very sick. It was the ICTY’s doctors who, a little more than a year earlier, had advised that Milošević was too sick to conduct his own defense. If the ICTY were now to empanel another set of doctors, there was a real possibility that they might come back and say, yes, Milošević needs intensive treatment and a long rest. The doctors might even recommend that the trial be postponed indefinitely.

The alternative was also perilous. The judges could have granted Milošević’s request to go to the Bakulev clinic in Moscow. The ICTY didn’t seriously believe that the Russian government would renege on its commitments to return Milošević to The Hague. The ICTY was concerned about something else. Delaying the trial and thus delaying the much-anticipated guilty verdict risked provoking a massive outpouring of indignation in the media and from well-connected NATO political figures that the Milošević trial was taking too long and that the former president was receiving too many favors from a U.N. court. The ICTY had already become visibly uncomfortable in the face of growing criticism that the Milošević case appeared to be dragging on forever.

For some time now, the Milošević trial judges had been itching to move things along and to bring in their verdict. On Nov. 22, 2005, just one week after Milošević alerted the judges to the independent physicians’ report about his deteriorating health, the judges suggested that the Kosovo indictment be severed from the other indictments and that that part of the trial be concluded right away. A speedy (guilty) verdict on the Kosovo charges could then have been brought in to give the ICTY, NATO and, above all, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom—then embroiled in the growing carnage in Iraq—a much-needed boost. However, both Milošević and the prosecution (for very different reasons) protested vigorously and, on Dec. 12, the judges were forced to abandon the idea.

Facing unappealing choices, the Milošević judges decided to do nothing, and dressed this up in a lot of lawyerly obfuscation. They neither claimed that Milošević was a faker, nor ordered a new medical examination, nor permitted him to be treated by the Russian specialists nor asserted, as Carla del Ponte claimed they did, that “everything that Milošević needed was being offered to him in the prison in The Hague.” Instead, they asked Milošević to try to prove the unprovable—namely, that he couldn’t get the treatment he needed in the Netherlands, as if he had ever been offered such treatment. By doing so, the court shifted responsibility for his worsening condition, not to mention possible death, onto its prisoner.

THE STRANGE RIFAMPICIN TALE

Worse was yet to come for the ICTY. Within days of his death, it emerged that Milošević had written a letter to the Russian foreign ministry, voicing his suspicion that the ICTY was poisoning him. In the letter dated March 8 (three days before his death), Milošević disclosed that a day earlier he had been notified

that on January 12th (i.e. two months ago), an extremely strong drug was found in my blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy, although I never used any kind of antibiotic during this 5 years that I’m in their prison. Throughout this whole period, neither have I had any kind of infectious illness (apart from flu). Also the fact that doctors needed 2 months (to report to me) can’t have any other explanation than we are facing manipulation. In any case, those who foist on me a drug against leprosy surely can’t treat my illness; likewise those from which I defended my country in times of war and who have an interest to silence me.

Subsequent news reports identified the “extremely strong drug” to which Milošević had referred as Rifampicin. Milošević’s letter raised two very tricky issues for the ICTY. Why was there Rifampicin in his blood? And—even more mysterious—if the tests were conducted on Jan. 12, why was Milošević not apprised of the Rifampicin discovery until March 7? Why had the ICTY allowed two months to elapse before disclosing its finding?

(Incidentally, this was not the first time that the ICTY had been accused of tampering with Milošević’s medication and endangering his health. In November 2002, a Reuters report revealed, “Wrong medicines given to Slobodan Milošević in prison sent his blood pressure shooting up earlier this month, forcing a halt to his trial, a Dutch newspaper reported yesterday. The paper quoted sources in the U.N. war crimes tribunal as saying administering the wrong medication caused blood pressure problems.”[iii])

Now, the ICTY needed to go into serious damage control. It went into action and did what it does best: it threw out baseless accusations against others. Relying on its usual cast of media mouthpieces, the ICTY turned the tables on the dead Milošević. It was not the ICTY that had administered the Rifampicin to Milošević; rather, it was Milošević himself who had done so. And it was the ICTY that had found out about his medication abuse and it was the ICTY that had blown the whistle on him.

“Did Milošević take illicit drug in high-risk plot to beat justice?” asked the headline of a story in the Times (London). The ICTY, the story opened breathlessly, has “begun an urgent investigation into how Slobodan Milošević had access to unprescribed drugs inside his prison cell before he died at the weekend.” Quoting an ICTY “source,” the Times went on, “It is thought to have been an escape plan, the idea being that he went off for treatment to Russia, but was then too ill to be returned to the trial.”[iv] The story then referred to one Donald Uges, described as a professor of clinical and forensic toxicology at the University of Groningen. The strange Donald Uges was to feature prominently in the coming days during the bizarre Rifampicin saga. 

Uges had a theory he was eager to share with the media. According to the Times, Uges thought that Milošević

had taken the drugs to improve his case for getting medical treatment in Russia, where his wife, son and brother live: “I don’t think he took his medicines for suicide, only for his trip to Moscow...I think that was his last possibility to escape The Hague. I am sure there is no murder.”…The Hague court became suspicious that Mr Milošević was secretly taking unprescribed drugs after his official medicine failed to work. On January 12 doctors suggested the most likely reason was that he was secretly taking unofficial drugs for a second time. In 2003 he was found to have been taking drugs supplied by his Belgrade doctor rather than those prescribed by the prison doctor, and since then had to take medication under supervision.

So Milošević was taking medicine on a regular basis that he wasn’t supposed to be taking. And, according to Uges, Milošević did this in order to book his passage to Moscow. It was not explained how Uges—a forensic toxicologist, not a doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a police investigator—could rule out suicide or murder. How could Uges, who had never even met Milošević, know what was going in the former Yugoslav president’s mind? The Times also quoted the ubiquitous Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, who, just like Uges, inexplicably seemed to be in no doubt that Milošević was helping himself to non-prescribed medication: “What measures were in place to ensure unprescribed medicines were not passed to him?” he demanded to know. “If the tribunal knew about it and was negligent, then that is bad.”

The facts, as recited by Uges, were almost entirely incorrect. It was Milošević himself who had volunteered to undergo the Jan. 12 blood tests under controlled conditions. There was no finding that he was taking drugs supplied by his Belgrade doctor in 2003. Milošević was taking medication under ICTY supervision because all ICTY detainees took medication under ICTY supervision. Uges’s wild inaccuracies didn’t stop him from giving innumerable interviews and, more important, from later offering expert advice to the ICTY’s “internal” investigation into Milošević’s death.

The Associated Press was also happy to serve as an ICTY intermediary: “Slobodan Milošević had regular access to unprescribed drugs and alcohol smuggled into his prison cell, yet the U.N. war crimes tribunal failed to take immediate action despite warnings.”[v] According to AP, Milošević

self-medicated in order to slow the pace of his war crimes trial by taking advantage of his heart condition....The officials told the AP that two doctors had concluded the former Serb leader intentionally was taking drugs that undermined medication prescribed for his heart ailments…. [Milošević] was allowed to work in a private office where he could meet with witnesses and legal advisers unsupervised, making it impossible to monitor material they may have smuggled in to him, one of the officials told the AP.

Another AP story asserted, “[P]rison authorities repeatedly found banned material in his cell, including alcohol and unprescribed drugs.”

The AP story was a little different from the one in the Times. First, alcohol had suddenly made an appearance. Second, Milošević was now alleged to be taking the non-prescribed medication so as to undermine his prescribed medication and thus slow the pace of the trial. Third, a new theme had emerged: If the ICTY was guilty of anything, it was of excessive laxity and tolerance.

Agence France-Presse came up with another variation on the story. “The office of the prosecutor,” the AFP story declared,

recalled that in 2003 during the prosecution presentation of the trial, it had “proved” that he was not taking his prescription medicine and took other non-prescription drugs as well. Milošević seemed to suffer a rise in blood pressure requiring rest days when ever a star prosecution witness testified. The trial was interrupted over a dozen times during the prosecution case because Milošević fell ill. “The overall and unanimous opinion of the experts is that the accused is not fit to conduct the trial himself, that he is not taking the drugs in the manner prescribed” prosecutor Geoffrey Nice said in September 2003. Last December the prosecution told the judges that Milošević’s request to be sent to Moscow should be denied because “the medical condition is and has been to an extent a fraud.” [vi]

According to AFP then, Milošević was only getting sick because the prosecutors were doing such a superb job. Milošević was taking non-prescribed medication, including presumably Rifampicin, “when ever a star prosecution witness testified” so that he could get extra rest days. In fact, Milošević wasn’t sick at all; his medical condition was a “fraud.” Yet, confusingly, he was “not fit to conduct the trial himself.” Even more confusingly, if Milošević’s medical condition was indeed a “fraud,” why was he now dead?

On March 16, AFP reported that

prosecutors said the medical reports supported their belief that Milošević made himself too ill to appear in court by skipping his heart medication….Two weeks ago, after the court asked for blood tests to find out why Milošević was not responding to treatment for high blood pressure, toxicologist Donald Uges suspected and found the presence of the antibiotic rifampicin, which is known to counter the effects of other medication.[vii]

So now, it was supposedly the ICTY that had ordered the blood tests—and a mere “two weeks ago,” not in January. And now Uges had apparently found in Milošević’s blood what he had suspected all along! But why would Uges have suspected the presence of a rare and difficult to obtain antibiotic?

The Los Angeles Times added more details about Milošević’s alleged subterfuge. Milošević had supposedly been “allowed access in detention to some visitors with only minimal surveillance and searches…. The limited scrutiny of those visits could have provided an opportunity for Milošević to obtain the drug rifampicin, which was found in his blood and may have contributed to his death.”[viii] The report went on, “Because Milošević chose to represent himself before the tribunal, he was given the right to meet with his legal advisors, diplomatic officials or prospective trial witnesses in a work space that was only lightly monitored.” So now we have the suggestion that Milošević’s “legal advisors, diplomatic officials or prospective trial witnesses” were colluding with him in the smuggling operation while a lackadaisical, benevolent ICTY looked on, paying little attention to prison security.

The most detailed account of Uges’s allegations appeared in the New York Times under Marlise Simons’s byline. On March 12, Simons reported that Milošević “had been taking medicine not prescribed by his physicians, including an antibiotic known to diminish or blunt the effect of the medicines he had been taking for heart and blood-pressure problems.” The next day, her report led off with the statement,

A top toxicologist in the Netherlands said…that he believed that [Milošević] had been manipulating medication to fake a medical condition, a ploy that contributed to his ill heath and may have played a role in the heart attack that caused his death. That theory was advanced by Dr. Donald Uges…who suggested that Mr. Milošević had been seeking to demonstrate that Dutch doctors could not cure him and that he should therefore be allowed to seek treatment, and freedom, in Moscow.[ix]

Yet another variation on the story: We now have Milošević’s faking his medical condition and, in doing so, causing his own death. That of course would tie things up nicely for the ICTY, which badly needed to explain away the sudden death of a prisoner who, a few days before his demise, had accused it of poisoning him. Simons, a long-standing ICTY sycophant (note her ingratiating “top toxicologist in the Netherlands” comment), could be relied on to get out whatever message the ICTY wanted to get out. The ICTY message of the day was that Milošević was a faker, that he caused his own death and that the Dutch doctors assigned by the ICTY had provided first-rate treatment.

According to Simons, Uges

was first contacted in January by a senior toxicologist in The Hague, Dr. Daan Touw, who had been consulted by the court about Mr. Milošević recurrent health problems. “Milošević had constant high blood pressure, and the cocktail that always works was having no effect,” Dr. Uges said. “So Touw had concluded that another medicine was being used to stimulate the liver and to neutralize this cocktail. He asked me for a report, a counter-expertise, because his own report had been dismissed by Milošević’s lawyers. We both had the idea there was an unknown drug which broke down his own medication, and we got the idea that the most efficient was rifampicin,” he said. “I wrote a report about this in January, which was sent to the court. In late February, I was asked to check a blood sample for rifampicin and found it,” he said, adding that he was told only later that it belonged to Mr. Milošević. Dr. Uges said it was an unusual test. “Normally when you screen for toxic drugs you never screen for rifampicin because it is specific for tuberculosis and leprosy, so unless you have a reason, you don’t look for it,” he said.

It’s worth quoting Simons at length because the tale she spun, under the influence of Uges, had more than a few peculiarities to it. First, we have the by-now familiar story that the reason the prescribed medication wasn’t working was that Milošević was taking some other medication to mitigate its effects. Simons didn’t bother to ask how Uges was able to rule out alternative explanations. Maybe the prescription was wrong? Maybe the dosage was wrong? Maybe Milošević was not taking the medication he had been prescribed?  On the basis of no tests and no forensic examination, Uges reaches the extraordinary conclusion that Milošević’s blood probably contained Rifampicin, a highly unusual drug. Then, we are told, in late February, Uges was handed an unidentified blood sample, which, amazingly enough, contained Rifampicin! And then, Uges was told that the unidentified blood sample belonged to Milošević.

This of course was head dizzying in its wild implausibility. On the basis of no evidence, a toxicologist concludes that a patient whom he had not seen was taking non-prescribed medication to mitigate the effects of prescribed medication—exactly in accord with the suspicions and unsubstantiated allegations of ICTY prosecutors. He speculates that the non-prescribed medication was Rifampicin, and writes a report obviously intended for the Milošević prosecutors. He is then handed a blood sample to check. He checks it and find that it contains Rifampicin. He is then told the blood sample belonged to Milošević. All of this is supposedly happening at the very time the ICTY judges are desperately looking around trying to find some justification to deny Milošević’s request to receive medical treatment in Moscow. Uges then rushes to the media to recount this fantastical tale  

Simons, like other reporters, had no doubts as to Uges’s veracity even as he engaged in wild speculations:

Discussing the case with colleagues, Dr. Uges said he had concluded: “There was one escape for Milošević out of prison, and that was to Moscow where his wife and son, and friends were. He wanted to go to Moscow on a one-way trip. The only way he could do that was to accuse us, to say that Dutch doctors were not treating him well.” 

It was clear that Uges’s claims were key to the tale the ICTY was eager to spin. Milošević was undermining the first-rate medical care the ICTY was providing him with by taking a medication that would threaten his health to such an extent that the ICTY would have no choice but to allow him to go to Moscow.

What’s important to keep in mind here is that it was Milošević himself who had brought attention to the Rifampicin and had accused the ICTY of poisoning him. In any police investigation of Milošević’s sudden death, the ICTY would be under suspicion. Instead, the media were happy to present the ICTY as the disinterested party doing the investigating and, Milošević, the possible victim of a crime, as the party under suspicion.

Needless to say, the media did not ask how Uges, a toxicologist with no medical or psychiatric training, someone who had never met or treated Milošević, could speak with such confidence about Milošević’s motives and thought-processes.

The media were even more credulous when it came to the nonsensical nature of the story. Consider this: According to Uges, Milošević had to be “getting sophisticated advice.” Whoever was providing him with the drug “had to know what dose to give, sufficient for it to be effective, but not too high because you get a so-called red sweat: your saliva becomes red. And someone would have to know how to get it to the patient…because you have to take a capsule of it every day to keep your blood pressure high.” In other words, as Uges himself revealed, taking Rifampicin is an enterprise full of pitfalls. There are many, much easier ways to undermine the effectiveness of prescribed medication than Rifampicin—a rare drug that is difficult to obtain and that would more than likely be detected in the blood tests Milošević regularly underwent and that he himself had proposed. Wouldn’t it have been much simpler not to take one’s medication at all? Every child knows the trick of pretending to swallow a pill, while hiding it under one’s tongue.

The media didn’t wonder how Uges could be so certain that someone else did not administer the Rifampicin to Milošević. A toxicologist presumably is only able to detect the presence of a toxin, not how it got there. And even if Uges were right, and Milošević did administer the medication to himself, how could he dismiss the possibility that Milošević had intended to commit suicide? Obviously Uges’s story fitted the needs of the tribunal very neatly. First, it answered the question as to why the ICTY had refused to allow Milošević to go to Moscow. Since he was manipulating his health to secure this trip, then the ICTY was surely right to refuse to be played for a sucker. Second, the story addressed the issue of the ICTY’s possibly negligent medical treatment. No, there was no negligence: Milošević was deliberately undermining the treatment; hence the deterioration of health. Third, the cause of death had now been identified: Milošević himself, not the ICTY, had caused his death. Fourth, the dread possibility that Milošević had committed suicide could now be ruled out. (Obviously, another suicide coming just a few days after that of Milan Babić would have been horribly embarrassing for the ICTY.) Fifth, Milošević, in order to get his hands on the illicit drugs, would have had to make use of friends, legal advisors or defense witnesses. They had taken advantage of the ICTY’s leniency. The ICTY would thus be justified in imposing tighter restrictions on its prisoners, in particular on those, such as Milošević, who elect to represent themselves.

[i] Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milošević, Decision on Assigned Counsel Request for Provisional Release, Feb. 23, 2006, para. 17.

[ii] Ibid., para. 18.

[iii] “Slobo Gets Wrong Drug,” Calgary Sun, Nov. 24, 2002.

[iv] “Did Milošević take illicit drug in high-risk plot to beat justice?” Times (London), March 14.

[v] The Associated Press, March 14.

[vi] “Milošević and his medications were a constant factor in the trial,” AFP, March 13.

[vii] “Prosecutors long suspected Milošević of juggling his meds, documents show,” AFP, March 16.

[viii] “Drugs could have been sneaked in to Milošević; some visits were not closely monitored, offering opportunities to pass along medicine that could have contributed to his death,” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2006.

[ix] “Expert suggests Milošević died in a drug ploy,” New York Times, March 13.