Milosevic’s Wife Arrives in The Hague, Visits Jailed Husband

Slobodan Milosevic was reunited with his wife Thursday as she made her first trip to The Hague since the ousted Yugoslav leader was spirited out of his country to face war crimes charges.

Mirjana Markovic, called “Lady Macbeth” by her detractors, spent more than six hours at the United Nations detention center in The Hague, where Milosevic awaits trial on charges including crimes against humanity.

Markovic, who traveled to the Netherlands on a scheduled flight from Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, was whisked in and out of the detention unit in a black BMW. She said nothing to reporters.

Russian radio quoted Milosevic’s brother as saying Markovic, 59, was upset at being separated from her husband, who was handed into the custody of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on June 28.

“Mirjana is suffering badly, but she is committed to fighting for her husband and for the truth,” Borislav Milosevic, ex-Yugoslav ambassador to Russia, told Echo of Moscow radio.

A prominent politician, Markovic is widely seen as a driving force behind her husband’s career.

Milosevic is accused of responsibility for mass killings and expulsions of Kosovo Albanians in 1999.

Markovic was accompanied to the Netherlands by lawyer Dragoslav Ognjanovic, who told reporters on Markovic’s behalf that she was exhausted but that Milosevic was in good form.

“He is very well. He feels good, as a matter of fact,” Ognjanovic said in English.

Markovic brought books and clothes for her husband, whom she met only in the presence of an official at the tribunal detention center in the Hague seaside suburb of Scheveningen.

Markovic, scheduled to stay in the Netherlands until Saturday, left the prison by a side entrance after her visit and was driven to a plush hotel in an elegant diplomatic quarter of The Hague. Ognjanovic said she would visit again today.

Asked if Markovic was happy, Ognjanovic said: “Of course she’s not.”

Milosevic, who was ousted by reformers in October, has refused to see a lawyer and says he does not recognize the authority of the court, which has entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.