Report: Decade after Milosevic ouster, family free to return

Sep 21, 2010, 8:30 GMT

Belgrade - The widow of deposed and deceased Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's widow will be free to return home next month when the statute of limitations expired on charges against her, a family lawyer was quoted as saying by Tuesday's daily Press.

'The warrant for (Mirjana Markovic's) arrest will be withdrawn on October 13,' lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic told the newspaper. He described the charges as a 'mockery of logic and justice.'

Markovic was charged in 2002 for allegedly using her influence in an illegal allocation of state-owned apartments in Belgrade. She fled the country in 2003.

Only last week, her son Marko Milosevic saw charges dropped due to expiring statues of limitation. He had been charged with torturing activists from Milosevic's opposition and been on the run since Milosevic was toppled from power in October 2000.

Failure to prosecute Milosevic's family only adds to the widespread disappointment of many Serbs on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Milosevic's fall, October 5.

The mother and son were also investigated amid suspicions of their involvement in the multimillion dollar business of tobacco smuggling in Serbia during Milosevic's reign, which faced international sanctions, but 'that procedure has been laid to rest,' Tomanovic said.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic, who succeeded Milosevic as the head of the Socialist Party, said that he had 'heard that Mira Markovic wants to return home.'

Markovic, 68, never held a government post, but is believed to have had a huge influence on her husband's actions.

Victims of the regime and their families accused her of instigating repression, even murder, highlighted by the cases of journalist Slavko Curuvija in 1999 and politician Ivan Stambolic in 2000.

Marko Milosevic, 36, turned to business in his early 20s, liberally using his father's name to open doors and get around laws, according to allegations linked to the tobacco-smuggling probe.

In the Milosevic hometown of Pozarevac, 80 kilometres east of Belgrade, he operated a huge open-air disco, a radio station and a bakery, while, in the capital, he owned an expensive cosmetics shop.

The elder Milosevic was arrested under corruption charges in 2001, but was extradited to stand a genocide trial at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague the following year.

Serbian authorities also linked him, in absentia, to the Stambolic murder. But he died of a heart attack in 2006, before any trial could conclude, aged 64.

During his heavy-handed 12-year reign, he involved Serbia in wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and allowed cronies effective control of the economy.