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UÇKHistory and Memory
Life: 1941 – 11 March 2006

Analytical profile · State officials · Political leaders · Defendants in court proceedings

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević was the leader of Serbia and later President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. His rise to power in the late 1980s was closely linked to the Kosovo question and to the curtailment of its autonomy in 1989. In May 1999, during the war, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him for crimes in Kosovo. He died in the Tribunal's detention unit in March 2006, before judgment was delivered, and the proceedings were terminated.

Also known as: Sllobodan Millosheviq · Slobodan Milosevic

Editorial status: Awaiting verificationDrafted from the cited sources; not yet fully reviewed by the editors.

Source basis

Academic monographs and public ICTY records; no first-person quotations.

Scholars link the consolidation of Milošević's power to political mobilization around Kosovo and to the campaign that led to the 1989 constitutional changes [1] [2].

In October 1998 he negotiated with Richard Holbrooke the agreement on a partial withdrawal of forces and the deployment of verifiers. After the failure of Rambouillet and NATO's air campaign, he accepted the terms that led to the Kumanovo Agreement [3].

The ICTY indictment concerning Kosovo was confirmed in May 1999 and later joined with the indictments concerning Croatia and Bosnia. The trial did not end in a judgment: after his death, the proceedings were terminated. This archive therefore does not present his criminal guilt as judicially established; crimes established in other cases, such as Šainović et al., are attributed to the persons convicted in those cases [4] [5].

Sources

  1. [1]Noel Malcolm. Kosovo: A Short History. HarperPerennial, New York (botim i përditësuar); botimi i parë: Macmillan, Londër, 1998, 1999. https://archive.org/details/kosovoshorthisto0000malc. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  2. [2]Tim Judah. Kosovo: War and Revenge. Yale University Press, 2000. https://books.google.com/books/about/Kosovo.html?id=TDmwQgAACAAJ. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  3. [3]Ivo H. Daalder, Michael E. O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo. Brookings Institution Press, 2001-10-01. https://www.brookings.edu/books/winning-ugly/. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  4. [4]Tribunali Penal Ndërkombëtar për ish-Jugosllavinë (ICTY), faqja arkivore e mbajtur nga IRMCT. Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milošević (IT-02-54) — faqja e çështjes. IT-02-54. https://www.icty.org/en/case/slobodan_milosevic. Accessed 2026-09-16.
  5. [5]Tribunali Penal Ndërkombëtar për ish-Jugosllavinë (ICTY). Prosecutor v. Šainović et al. (IT-05-87) — faqja e çështjes (gjykimi: Milutinović et al.). IT-05-87. https://www.icty.org/en/case/milutinovic. Accessed 2026-09-16.

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