Slobodan Milošević

Biography

Slobodan Milošević was born in Požarevac in 1941, during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia. He studied law at the University of Belgrade, graduating in 1964, and became an economic adviser to the mayor of Belgrade. With the backing of his university friend Ivan Stambolić he moved into business, joining the Tehnogas company in 1968 and becoming its chairman in 1973, and by 1978 he headed Beobanka, one of the country's largest banks.

He rose through the communist party, becoming head of the Belgrade city committee in 1984 and leader of the League of Communists of Serbia in 1986. In 1987 he took up the grievances of Kosovo Serbs and pushed Stambolić aside. Mass rallies by his supporters, the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution of 1988–89, replaced the leaderships of Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro with his allies, and in 1989 he became president of Serbia. That June he gave the Gazimestan speech on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. In 1990 he founded the Socialist Party of Serbia, which he led until his death.

As president of Serbia and, from 1997, of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, he played a central part in the Yugoslav Wars and signed the Dayton Agreement in 1995. His rule was marked by electoral fraud, repression of the press and large protests. During the Kosovo War in 1999 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted him for war crimes, and further indictments covering Croatia and Bosnia, including genocide, followed in 2001.

After a disputed election, protests forced him from power in October 2000. He was arrested in 2001 and handed over to the tribunal in The Hague, where his trial began in February 2002. He conducted his own defence and died of a heart attack in his cell in March 2006, before a verdict was reached.