Heads of state facing Hague accusations: The cases of Putin and Milošević

“They were all powerful individuals, yet they found themselves in courtrooms.”

This is the message of Karim Khan, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, regarding the warrant issued by the Court on 17 March for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.

Among the influential individuals who “found themselves in custody against the expectations of many”, Khan, in an interview with CNN on 17 March, mentioned, among others, the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), Slobodan Milosevic .

After his fall from power, the new democratic government of Serbia extradited Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in June 2001.

He was tried for genocide and war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo in the 1990s, and died in judicial custody in 2006 before being sentenced.

“Both Milošević and Putin were heads of state at the time of the accusation. In both cases, the accusation was made while the armed conflict was still ongoing,” the professor of international law at the University of Reading, Great Britain told Radio Free Europe (RSE) Marko Milanović.

He adds that both cases have “huge political dimensions”, but the main difference is that Putin is “the ruler of a nuclear superpower”, while Milosevic was “the sovereign of a small country”.

What is the reaction in Belgrade to Putin’s arrest?

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic criticised the decision of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and said that the warrant for Putin’s arrest shows “an unwillingness to talk about peace”.

“If you have accused him of the most serious war crimes, who are you going to talk to now?” said Vucic in an address to the public on 19 March.

He did not explicitly answer a journalist’s question about Putin’s possible arrest if he is in Serbia.

“Don’t get angry, this is a pointless question, because while the war is going on, Putin has nowhere to go, not even to Serbia”, Vucic said.

He stressed that he had not handed over those previously requested by another court in The Hague – the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

“You have these experts who put all the Serbs in sacks and sent them to The Hague, maybe they volunteered to help. As far as Serbia and I are concerned, we have better things to do at the moment”, Vucic said.

All those accused of crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia were extradited to The Hague before Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power in 2012.

Since 2015, Belgrade has refused to extradite two members of the Serbian Radical Party, of which Vucic was an official until the split in 2008, when the SNS was founded.

The Hague Tribunal charges Petar Jojić and Vjerica Radeta with influencing the witnesses in the trial against their party leader and Hague convict Vojislav Šešelj.

Putin’s defence’ at the Russian House in Belgrade

On 20 March, the Russian ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandar Bocan Kharchenko, said that the arrest warrant for Putin had “zero meaning” for Russia.

“The so-called indictment is ridiculous, stupid and goes beyond any rational thinking and behaviour,” Harchenko said at a meeting at the Russian House in Belgrade.

The meeting was organised by the NGO “Centre for the Restoration of International Law”, whose president is lawyer Goran Petronijevic.

Petronijevic defended convicted former Republika Srpska President Radovan Karadzic and JNA officer Veselin Šljivančanin before the Hague.

Lawyer Toma Fila, an official of the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and a defender of Slobodan Milosevic, also spoke at the meeting.

The Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Belgrade, better known as the “Russian House”, hosted several events in support of the invasion of Ukraine.

Who is obliged to arrest and extradite Putin?

As a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Serbia has committed to arrest and extradite persons wanted by the Court if they are found on its territory.

“This means that state visits by Putin to ICC member states would probably be impossible or cause major legal and political controversy,” said international law professor Marko Milanovic.

Putin was in Serbia in January 2019.

Four months after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in June 2022, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, was supposed to come to Belgrade, but North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bulgaria refused to open their airspace.

The Serbian President confirmed that the visit had been cancelled on 6 June after a meeting with Russian Ambassador Aleksandr Bocan Kharchenko, who “expressed his dissatisfaction” with the circumstances that prevented Lavrov’s arrival.

Although it has condemned the invasion of Ukraine in several resolutions at the United Nations, Serbia is one of the few countries that refuses to join the European Union’s policy of imposing sanctions on Russia.

On 18 March, the coalition partner of the ruling SNS, the Socialist Movement of Aleksandar Vulin, called for a withholding of support for the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute.

Vulin, who is now head of the Security and Information Agency, and President Aleksandar Vucic were in power in Serbia when the indictment against the country’s then President, Slobodan Milosevic, arrived from the other Court in The Hague in May 1999.

How was Milosevic extradited?

The indictment for crimes during the war in Kosovo was the first indictment against the current head of state issued by an international court.

In May 1999, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (The Hague Tribunal) was set up by the United Nations Security Council to prosecute crimes committed during the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s.

“Serbia had an international legal obligation to extradite Milosevic to the Court because of the Security Council’s decisions, which were not opposed by Russia or China,” says Professor Marko Milanovic.

Milosevic was not extradited to this court while he was in power.

Eight months will pass since the fall of his regime on October 5, 2000, until the democratic government led by Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić sent him to The Hague.

He was arrested on 1 April 2001 and extradited to the Tribunal on 28 June of the same year.

The extradition led to tensions and political conflicts between the government of Prime Minister Đinđić, who was assassinated in 2003, and the opponents of the extradition, led by the country’s President, Vojislav Koštunica.

Authorities in Serbia have extradited more than 40 indictees to The Hague

The last indictee, former Republika Srpska Army commander Ratko Mladic, was handed over to the court in 2011 after nearly 16 years in hiding, followed a few months later Goran Hadžić, the leader of the unrecognized Republic of Serbian Krajina who died in 2016 before the verdict was pronounced.

Before that, in 2008, former Republika Srpska President Radovan Karadzic was extradited to The Hague.

Together with Mladic, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the most serious crime of genocide in which more than 8,000 Bosniak civilians were killed in Srebrenica, BiH, in July 1995.

Serbia extradited the first defendant to The Hague in 1996, when Slobodan Milosevic was in power. This was Dražen Erdemović, who participated in the Srebrenica genocide and was later granted protected witness status.

In the case of the last defendants, radicals Petar Jojić and Vjerica Radeta, the Belgrade High Court ruled in 2016 that there were no legal grounds for their extradition.

The court said that the national law on cooperation with The Hague provides for an obligation to extradite only those accused of war crimes, not those accused of contempt of court, as Jojić and Radeta are accused of.

How could Putin be extradited to The Hague?

Unlike Serbia in the The Hague Tribunal case, Russia has no obligation to cooperate with the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

” Milosevic was tried before a court established by the Security Council. The proceedings against Putin are being conducted before the permanent International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, which was established by an international treaty to which neither Ukraine nor Russia is a member,” says Professor Marko Milanovic.

However, Ukraine has accepted the jurisdiction of this court, which means that it can prosecute those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on its territory.

“States that are signatories to the Rome Statute (of the International Criminal Court) are obliged to execute the arrest warrant issued by the court,” the president of the court, Piotr Hofmanski, told the Voice of America on 17 March.

123 countries have signed the Statute of the Court.

In the event that a signatory country fails to comply with its arrest and extradition obligations, the President of the Court will state the political consequences.

“The Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute and the Security Council may decide that a State has failed to fulfil its legal international obligation, but then there are political consequences. Of course, no one can force a state to fulfil its legal obligation under an agreement,” Hoffmann said.

Whether or not he is ever tried, Russian President Vladimir Putin will always be a “fugitive defendant” from international justice, U.S. lawyer David Scheffer told RFE/RL on 17 March.

Scheffer, who served as US war crimes ambassador in the Bill Clinton administration, is now a fellow at the non-governmental Council on Foreign Relations.

“Putin should really be afraid of travelling outside Russia. Maybe with the exception of countries like China, Belarus, Iran, North Korea,” Scheffer said.

These are countries, along with the United States, which are not signatories to the ICC Statute and have no obligation to cooperate with it.

 What are the differences in the accusations against Putin and Milosevic?

“No charges have been brought against Putin, but a warrant has been issued for his arrest. Before the ICC, a formal indictment is only confirmed if the accused is arrested or surrendered,” says international law professor Marko Milanovic.

He also points to the difference in the scope of the charges against Putin and former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

“Milosevic was accused of very large crimes in three separate conflicts (Croatia, BiH and Kosovo), while Putin is accused of a much more specific crime. This does not mean that the prosecutor will not have other charges against him in the future,” Milanovic says.

The court suspects Putin of the war crime of deporting a population (children) and transferring them from occupied Ukrainian territory to Russia.

Piotr Hofmanski, the president of the court, said that “it is obvious that this is not the end of the case”.

“It is still in the hands of the prosecutor,” he added.

After his transfer to The Hague, the prosecution charged Slobodan Milosevic with crimes in Croatia and BiH, in addition to crimes in Kosovo.

The indictment had a total of 66 counts for crimes committed over thousands of victims.

Similarities between Ukraine and the wars in the former Yugoslavia

Like the Russian President in Ukraine, Milosevic launched aggressive wars in the former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s under the slogan of “defence and protection of the Serbian nation”.

His authoritarian rule, like Putin’s, was marked by international sanctions and the isolation of the country.

“The basic message is this: Putin will not end up in The Hague as long as his regime is in power in Russia”, says Marko Milanovic.

He recalls that Milosevic was extradited only because his regime in Serbia had fallen.

“As things stand, it is unlikely that there will be such a fundamental political change in Russia, but no one can know for sure – not even Vladimir Putin”, he adds.

At the time of the indictment, Milošević was losing support at home after years of isolation, hyperinflation and, at the end, the NATO bombing of FRY.

In Russia, voices of resistance are being stifled by persecution and arrests, while hundreds of thousands of Russians, many of them opposed to the war, have fled the country.

More than 100 000 people were killed and millions displaced in the wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. More than 10,000 are still missing.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has claimed tens of thousands of lives, destroyed entire cities and displaced millions since 24 February 2022./RSE/