Adieu Slobodan

Slobodan Milosevic's death on March 11 during the latter stages of his genocide trial at The Hague has provoked immediate and varied world reaction. While human rights advocates and Milosevic's victims regret that Milosevic died before his final judicial reckoning, Serb nationalists and critics of latter-day UN-sponsored war crimes trials have blamed the Hague Tribunal (where Milosevic has stood trial for the past four years) for essentially"killing" the former Serb leader by holding him in custody while rejecting his request for medical care in Russia. Both sides agree, however, that Milosevic's death damages the tribunal itself thanks to an unfinished trial result which pleased neither Milosevic's dogged Serb supporters nor his many victims.

The abrupt end of the Milosevic trial is indeed unfortunate. He richly deserved a long life sentence during which he and the world at large could ruminate on his extensive and historic crimes. On the other hand the Hague Tribunal had aims beyond the trial of Milosevic himself. The tribunal has tried dozens of criminals from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, documented their nauseating crimes, and sentenced many to years and even decades in prison. The tribunal collected mountains of evidence tying Milosevic to many of these crimes - evidence which will be used by historians for decades to come as they study the worst European conflict since World War II while assessing blame from low level detention camp guards to army officers to Milosevic himself, oft referred to as the first head of state to stand trial for genocide.

And in fact international war crimes trials often do not satisfy our desire to see the worst criminals receive the worst punishment. Nazi leaders Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, three of the top perpetrators of history's largest genocide, all committed suicide before they could be tried. Hermann Goering, the highest Nazi figure tried at Nuremberg, committed suicide with a hidden cyanide vial shortly before his sentence of hanging could be carried out. Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess received a life sentence at Nuremberg which lasted more than four decades but his controversial suicide in 1987, some argued, stole from Nuremberg's legacy. Despite all of this, the Nuremberg trial exposed for the first time the extent of the Nazis' murderous aggression while providing the single most important landmark in human rights law. In a sense, the trial itself was larger than any of its defendants. And sensible people never doubted the guilt of those in the dock or those who had evaded justice.

So it is at The Hague where Milosevic has joined a long list of war criminals who have cheated justice. Already in poor health, Milosevic insisted on the stresses of defending himself, dragged the trial out for as long as he could, and lived on cigarettes and coffee despite hypertension and cardiac problems. No matter. His guilt transcends his sentence. And while it would have been cathartic to hear judgment pronounced, it is more important in the long run that he died, not in the comfortable embrace of his supporters, but in the house where his accusers had placed him.