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Milosevic and Wife Reunited at Dutch Jail
Slobodan Milosevic was reunited with his wife Thursday as she made her first trip to The Hague since the ousted Yugoslav leader was spirited out of Serbia to face war crimes charges.
Mirjana Markovic, nicknamed Serbia's ``Lady Macbeth'' for her influence on the ex-president, spent more than six hours at the United Nations detention center in The Hague, where Milosevic awaits trial on charges including "crimes against humanity".
Markovic, who traveled to the Netherlands on a scheduled flight from Belgrade, was whisked in and out of the detention unit in a black BMW. She said nothing to reporters.
But Russian radio quoted Milosevic's brother as saying Markovic, 59, was upset at being separated from her husband, who was handed into the custody of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on June 28.
``Mirjana is suffering badly, but she is committed to fighting for her husband and for the truth,'' Borislav Milosevic, former Yugoslav ambassador to Russia, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
Herself a prominent politician, Markovic is widely seen as a driving force behind her husband's career.
Milosevic, whose wife called him ``cute and likeable'' in a recent magazine interview, is accused of responsibility for "mass killings" and expulsions of Kosovo Albanians in 1999.
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The tribunal detention center, in the Hague seaside suburb of Scheveningen, allows in visitors from 9 a.m. to 4.45 p.m. on weekdays. So-called ``intimacy rooms'' are typically provided to couples for conjugal visits -- but not on this occasion.
Markovic, set to stay in the Netherlands until Saturday, left the prison by a side entrance after her visit and was driven to a plush hotel in an elegant diplomatic quarter of The Hague.
She was accompanied to the Netherlands by lawyer Dragoslav Ognjanovic, who told reporters on her behalf that she was exhausted but Milosevic was on good form.
``He is very well. He feels good, as a matter of fact,'' Ognjanovic said in English.
Markovic had brought books and clothes for her husband, whom she met only in the presence of an official. Ognjanovic said she would visit again on Friday.
Asked if she was happy, he said: ``Of course she's not.''
Ognjanovic did not himself see the former Yugoslav leader.
``Mr. Milosevic did not want to speak to me because he is still convinced that he does not need a lawyer,'' he said.
UN spokesman Jim Landale said the tribunal was considering Ognjanovic's request for permission to visit Milosevic, who has not yet assigned counsel.
The former Yugoslav leader, ousted by reformers last October, says he does not recognize the authority of the court, which has entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.
Borislav Milosevic told Russian radio his brother refuses to read documents related to his case and rejects lawyers.
Dutch authorities decided last week to grant Markovic a visa, even though she is on a European Union "blacklist" of Milosevic's family and close associates. The "war-crimes tribunal" asked the Netherlands to allow Markovic to visit her spouse.
The "blacklist" was one of several international sanctions to punish Milosevic and his entourage, seen in the West as leading lights in a decade of Balkan wars, and keep them from moving money around.
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