Milosevic’s Daughter Denies Firing at Officials in Siege

The daughter of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic admitted in court Friday that she had fired a gun during his chaotic arrest this year but denied that she had endangered anyone or violated gun laws.

Marija Milosevic, 36, is charged with public endangerment and illegal handgun possession in the April incident, which came at the end of a tense standoff between special police and armed bodyguards at the presidential residence. If found guilty, she could face up to three years in prison.

“I was shooting into the dark blue sky,” she testified as her trial opened Friday. “I fired all five bullets that fit into the cylinder of the Smith & Wesson gun. I fired out of despair.”

Contrasting her action with the traditional Serbian practice of firing guns into the air to celebrate weddings, important sports victories or the new year, she declared, “If one can shoot out of joy, then one can also shoot out of despair.”

The severity of the consequences of her actions depends largely on whether she really was shooting into the air or whether she directed her fire toward government officials who were in the compound to take her father away.

Immediately after the ousted president’s arrest, there were widespread rumors that she had fired at Cedomir Jovanovic, a negotiator that night who is a top aide to Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic of Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. Jovanovic, however, did not press charges.

Goran Cavlina, an investigative judge who was at the presidential residence as part of the government team that negotiated Milosevic’s surrender, testified Friday that his “impression was that she did not have the intention to shoot at anybody in particular--that is, that she didn’t have a determined target.”

Cavlina said that just before the shooting began, he had stepped into a vehicle with Jovanovic but that his coat had gotten stuck in the door. Cavlina opened the door and the shooting started, he testified. “All I heard was Ceda [Jovanovic] shouting, ‘Forget about the coat, she’s shooting at us!’ ” the investigative judge said.

Jovan Maric, a well-known psychiatrist who testified as head of a court-appointed team, said that Marija Milosevic was “seriously mentally unbalanced” that night.

There can be little doubt that Marija Milosevic--who owned a television and radio station and a disco when her father was in power--was deeply distraught over his arrest. Images of the siege, with masked special police carrying semiautomatic rifles, had been broadcast on television and watched by the family.

Immediately after her father’s arrest, it was widely reported that when he agreed to be taken away to prison, she urged him to kill himself instead.

“Marija had simply gone mad from fury and started shouting to her father: ‘Coward, why didn’t you kill yourself? Kill yourself now!’ ” the Belgrade weekly Nedeljni Telegraf reported in April, in a typical account of the incident.

In Friday’s testimony, Marija Milosevic said that during the standoff, she first took seven or eight sedative tablets, and then, when they seemed to have no effect, she drank a bottle of cognac.

“I had seen on BK Television people in front of the residence with stockings on their heads,” she testified. “There was a $5-million reward out for my father. I thought these were bounty hunters and that they would kill us all for less money than that. I felt endangered.”

On the night of the arrest, she handled three guns and had permits for two of them: the Smith & Wesson and a Yugoslav-made CZ 99, she testified. The third gun belonged to her father, and she picked it up by mistake, she said.

“The guns were in a drawer in Daddy’s dressing room,” she testified. “For that smaller gun, I actually thought [at first] that it was a box of ammunition. It looked like a toy from a McDonald’s Happy Meal.”

Slobodan Milosevic was held at a prison in Belgrade, the capital, until late June, when he was sent to face charges of crimes against humanity at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Genocide charges were subsequently added.

The ousted president also has a son, Marko, who during the 1990s ran a disco and had a reputation for involvement in cigarette smuggling and other rackets. His whereabouts are unclear, but according to Serbian officials he was in Azerbaijan earlier this year.

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Times staff writer Holley reported from Warsaw and special correspondent Cirjakovic from Belgrade.