Word: serb
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...once all-powerful party put him in the ground in the dark, not in some grand presidential tomb but in a plain grave beneath a 100-year-old linden tree in his sooty Serbian hometown of Pozarevac. A brass band, made up of retired members of the Serb military, played a mournful march, as a handful of the faithful tried to recapture his former glory in speeches blending his trademark nationalist rhetoric with rants against Serbia's manifold alleged enemies. Though an estimated 80,000 attended a memorial rally in Belgrade, most Serbs, it seemed, were glad that their erstwhile...
That makes it even more crucial to bring to trial the two most wanted remaining fugitives, Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Along with Milosevic, both were indicted by the war-crimes court for their role in the infamous 1995 massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, and are widely believed to be in hiding in Serbia, although the Serbian government denies harboring them. Observers say only intense international pressure will persuade Belgrade to cooperate. Serbia's desire to eventually join the European Union might also give it an incentive to rid itself of the pair...
...consequences of his policies were all too visible, in Sarajevo, in Srebrenica and in Vukovar. Almost 11 years ago, I walked the town's muddy streets, stepping over corpses, as Serb militia members led away helpless civilians to what would be their mass grave. A year later, as part of a similar land grab in eastern Bosnia, the same men were happily torching Muslim homes and murdering their owners. The fighters were drunk with bloodlust and slivovitz, but they were also led by the invisible hand of Milosevic's secret police, who organized, armed and supplied them...
...into the courtroom, my memory becomes somewhat scattered. I was surprised that Milosevic looked so much smaller than I remembered him, like a grumpy old man--and evil. Earlier that day he ridiculed a witness whose legs were amputated due to vascular disease by reminding him of the Serb proverb "Lies have short legs." Despite my nervousness, I felt strangely desensitized when the questioning actually began. I just tried to keep my composure and use all my remaining wits to answer his questions...
...This was not always easy, because some of Milosevic's queries were too ludicrous to be taken seriously. He implied, for example, that I was part of a vast anti-Serb conspiracy that also included Harvard University, a number of human-rights groups and various media outlets. He spent a lot of time trying to prove that my story was nothing but irrelevant hearsay. I tried to describe what I had seen in Vukovar as simply and clearly as possible. It may have been the most important thing I will ever do. After my testimony was over I felt...