Skip to content
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

Source basis

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

Black-and-white portrait of a man in suit and tie, turned slightly to the side.
Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006), later President of Serbia and of FR Yugoslavia, in 1988. Photo: Stevan Kragujević.Photo: Stevan Kragujević · 1988 · CC BY-SA 3.0

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].

Photographs

White and brick-coloured multi-storey building with a flag on top, behind a square with trees.
The building of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo in Pristina, photographed on 13 September 2020.Photo: Arianit · 2020-09-13 · CC BY-SA 4.0
French château with turrets and a flower garden in front.
The Château de Rambouillet in France, the venue of the Kosovo talks in February 1999. Photograph taken in 2021.Photo: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) · 2021-09-04 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Civilian and military officials seated around a conference table.
NATO Secretary General Javier Solana meets US Secretary of Defense William Cohen at the Pentagon on 15 March 1999. They discussed NATO's reaction should Yugoslavia refuse to sign the peace agreement worked out in Rambouillet.Photo: Robert D. Ward · 1999-03-15 · Domen publik (Public domain)
White court building with a pond in front, under a cloudy sky.
Front of the building of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, photographed in 2013.Photo: UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia · 2013-01-11 · CC BY 2.0

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.

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

Last reviewed:

Report an inaccuracy