Doctors Find No Heart Problem in Milosevic

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is suffering only from high blood pressure, government authorities said Thursday after he was rushed to a military hospital from his prison cell the day before.

But the Socialist Party of Serbia, which the 59-year-old ousted president still leads, declared that he had come close to suffering a heart attack--and blamed it on prison life. The charge set the stage for fresh legal and political jockeying over Milosevic’s detention on corruption charges.

“A team of 10 doctors concluded that there was no damage to the heart and that the issue was high blood pressure, and the state of his health is absolutely satisfactory,” said Vladan Batic, justice minister of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. “It is not anything alarming.”

Socialist spokeswoman Ana Djurovic, however, declared at a news conference: “When Slobodan Milosevic was detained he was in good health, and 12 days later he’s in a pre-heart attack condition. It is obvious that the conditions he is kept under are not normal. We understand that some routine things were banned for him, like walks.”

“We can only interpret this as meaning that for a man who is absolutely convinced of his innocence, every lie about him and his family hits him directly in the heart,” she said.

Contrary to Socialist charges, various authorities have said that Milosevic’s treatment in prison is more favorable than that accorded a typical prisoner. He is reported to have a six-person cell to himself; no other inmates are allowed to be present when he goes for walks in a prison courtyard; he has greater privileges to receive visitors than is normal; and he is allowed to keep a later schedule--both at night and in the morning--than allowed under prison routine, which requires inmates to arise at 5:30 a.m.

He also is reported to have plenty of reading material, including newspapers and Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” which was brought to him by his wife, Mirjana Markovic.

With timing that reinforced doubts about the seriousness of Milosevic’s health problems, the Socialists had released a statement Wednesday calling for his release on medical grounds. At the Central Prison here, Milosevic is “exposed to unbearable conditions which are threatening even his health,” the statement declared.

The health incident began with Milosevic complaining of chest pains and Markovic demanding that he be hospitalized, according to reports in Belgrade media.

The Belgrade District Court released a written statement Thursday that treated the health issue seriously, declaring that “doctors of the Central Prison’s hospital established that he had heart problems” and that he was transferred to the military hospital because of these “acute heart difficulties.” Milosevic remains under detention, the statement added.

Toma Fila, the former president’s lead lawyer, said Thursday that Milosevic was never in a life-threatening condition.

While critics of Milosevic, who was driven from power in October, might be unhappy about the apparent preferential treatment given to him in prison, Batic, the Serbian justice minister, seemed more concerned Thursday with stressing that the former president is not being mistreated.

From the first day of Milosevic’s detention, authorities have followed “elementary ethical norms” and given him treatment that exceeds that called for by the rules, Batic told reporters.

It also appeared that the medical care given Milosevic at the prison Wednesday night surpassed what an ordinary prisoner could expect.

Socialist Party Vice President Branislav Ivkovic told reporters that the prison administration had provided specialists who are “the best for this type of health problem” and that it had brought in “doctors who have followed his health for a long time.”

The Belgrade military hospital where Milosevic was undergoing tests Thursday has long been the best equipped in the country. In the past, top Communist Party leaders were treated there.

Mihailo Bakrac, another of Milosevic’s lawyers, said that the former president will have additional tests today and that a decision then will be made whether he should remain at the military hospital, be transferred to the prison hospital or go back to his cell.

Batic said he expected Milosevic to return soon to his cell--although referring to it, perhaps intentionally, as the former leader’s “room.”