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CNN Saturday Morning News

Slobodan Milosevic Found Dead; Investigation Into American Hostage's Death Underway

Aired March 11, 2006 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And breaking news out of Europe this morning. Within the last 30 minutes, CNN has confirmed that former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic has died, a Hague official, Betty, telling CNN that Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell. The cause of death is not yet known.

CNN chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, covered the Balkans conflicts and knew Milosevic as well as any journalist. She is on the phone from Kabul, Afghanistan.

And Christiane, just sort of recap where we are. I mentioned just a moment ago that we learned of this inside the last 30 minutes or so.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on phone): That's right. I confirmed it with the Hague, with the tribunal, and they did say that, in fact, he was found dead, Slobodan Milosevic, on trial on 66 different counts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, dead in his cell at 10:00 a.m. The guard apparently found him. He had alerted immediately the medical officers and others who came and confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead.

Apparently, Milosevic had been dead for several hours. The tribunal says they do not know the cause of death. They have ordered an autopsy and inquiries, and they also have informed his family of his death.

He's been on trial there since 2002, having been deported just a year earlier from Serbia. He had been indicted during the Kosovo war of 1999.

Certainly, this leaves the trial sort of case unclosed, if you like. No verdict, no sentence. But he was the first-ever head of state to have been indicted and tried on these crimes, the highest crimes under international law, Tony.

HARRIS: And Christiane, as I mentioned, you covered the Yugoslavia wars, that decade of war, '91 through 2001. And let me ask you to take on this notion that the wars in -- initially were fought to sort of forcibly keep Yugoslavia from breaking apart, to, in essence, keep Yugoslavia together.

AMANPOUR: Well, that's what Slobodan Milosevic always maintained, that he was just trying to keep the peace, so to speak, keep Yugoslavia together. But he unleashed forces, his proxies, those in the Republic of Croatia and then in the Republic of Bosnia, in the early '90s. And what they did was a campaign of ethnic cleansing, genocide, the slaughter of civilians, certainly in Bosnia, civilians who were Muslims.

We lived in Sarajevo under siege. We visited and spent much time in many of the other little towns around Bosnia under siege. And we saw firsthand the results of this ethnic cleansing and genocide.

For years, the world community did not want to accept that this was genocide. They wanted to say that this was a civil war between just some Bosnian factions. But when year after year, the stark facts of this genocide was presented on international news, on the United States television, CNN and other organizations, it became clear what it was. And, finally, the United States and others intervened and stopped the genocide in Bosnia, and then intervened to stop a genocide from -- about to take place in neighboring Kosovo.

And this, in turn, caused the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic, when he was defeated in both Bosnia and in Kosovo, and then went to elections in Serbia, he was defeated in those elections.

Shortly thereafter, he was arrested. As I said, he had been indicted a year or so earlier, and then he was deported to the Hague. His trial went on for so long because he insisted on defending himself, and he used his trial as a tribunal, as political platform as (INAUDIBLE) to appeal to his supporters back home.

HARRIS: And Christiane, you talk about the genocide, and you can't help but think of these numbers, 300,000 dead. What a toll. Millions turned into refugees as well.

AMANPOUR: That's right. It was the first such genocide in Europe since World War II. And it was a constant bloodletting. Sarajevo, which had become famous for being the home of the Winter Olympics one year, had been turned into a graveyard. Women, children, old men, everybody was a target. There were snipers. There were mortars raining down on Sarajevo and many other Bosnian towns for years.

And this was Slobodan Milosevic's proxies in Bosnia. And you know very well the name, Ratko Mladic...

HARRIS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: ... Radovan Karadzic in Bosnia, who, by the way, are still on the loose...

HARRIS: That's right.

AMANPOUR: ... who have not been arrested despite their indictments. And the prosecution, the tribunal, is calling on NATO, and now their European forces, to finally go and arrest them where they are and bring them to trial.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Christiane, this is Betty Nguyen with Tony Harris. I have a question for you, because you talk about the bloodshed. Let's also put this in perspective too, because there are still thousands still missing, correct?

AMANPOUR: There are several thousand, yes. The single worst massacre was that of Srebrenica in July of 1995. And that left more than 7,000 Bosnian men and young boys missing. And they have not been found. They have basically been slaughtered.

And we've seen much of the evidence emerge subsequently, pictures, tapes, evidence presented at the trials of various low-level commanders in the Hague, and, indeed, one higher-level commander.

But, yes, there are thousands still missing. There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, who were forced to flee, and many of whom are still in countries abroad, have not come back.

But many did come back after the war. And the intervention by NATO in Bosnia in 1995 to stop the war there was a success. It brought peace. The United States stopped the genocide. They brought peace. They had the Dayton peace conference, and that ended the war between the two sides.

But there was a degree of unfinished business.

HARRIS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And one of the chief parts of unfinished business was that the two local proxies, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are still at large. They still have not been captured. And this is something that really does need...

HARRIS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: ... now to be finished. They need to be captured and brought to trial.

HARRIS: Yes. Christiane, thank you so much for your time. We know you have to run and talk to our sister network, CNN international, but we thank you for your time this morning.

NGUYEN: Well, another person who also covered the Balkan wars is CNN's Brent Sadler. He joins us now from Lebanon this morning.

And Brent, I understand you just spoke with Milosevic's widow.

BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're still trying to actually get a hold of her, Mirjana Markovic, Milosevic's widow. She's in Russia, we can confirm. We should get some...

HARRIS: Did we just lose him?

NGUYEN: I think we just...

SADLER: ... spoken in the last half-hour...

NGUYEN: There we go. SADLER: ... to some other top leaders from Milosevic's Socialist Party, and they're saying that the Hague quotes, has committed, quotes, yet...

NGUYEN: All right. We're obviously having...

SADLER: ... defending Milosevic in court.

Are you hearing me?

NGUYEN: Yes, we're hearing you intermittently. Just keep going, Brent, with what you're saying, and we'll just pick it up from there.

SADLER: OK, Betty.

We're hearing from Milosevic's defense team that they're insisting on sending out their own Serbian doctors to the Hague to carry out an independent postmortem outside the Hague authorities.

We do expect to speak to Mirjana Markovic, that's Slobodan Milosevic's widow, who's in Russia, within the next few minutes or so. So we'll get back with more on that from her to you.

Also hearing from the vice president of Milosevic's party that he'd spoken to Milosevic just a few hours before the reported death, said that Milosevic had sounded fine, but also was very upset, they claim, that Milosevic had been told just 10 days ago by the Hague authorities that Milosevic would not be allowed to transfer from his confinement in the Netherlands to Russia, where his defense team had been insisting that Milosevic should be transferred because of serious heart problems and high blood pressure.

So that's why the Milosevic defense team now is, in effect, saying that the Hague tribunal has, quote, "murdered" Milosevic as a result of failing to respond to his dire medical predicament. So you can see the kind of language that's emerging out of this already inside Serbia among Milosevic activists, his defense team, and his supporters.

HARRIS: Hey, Brent, I know that you covered the Yugoslav wars as well. And I have to ask you, we were just talking to Christiane about this just a moment ago, and she did a wonderful job of sort of painting of a broad picture of this, and some of the detail as well.

I have to ask you, when you look at that series of wars, we're talking about a decades-long war, and so many deaths, so much human suffering, so many millions turned into refugees, how is it that the international community allowed that to happen? What were some of the explanations that you remember hearing at the time?

SADLER: Well, some of the most serious ones were, you know, whether or not -- who had the hand on the trigger for military action that could prevent Bosnian Serbs, for example, from committing acts of slaughter against the Bosnian Muslims in Sarajevo, the time it took through the political procedure to get the green light for military action. There were so many hands, effectively, international hands on the trigger of military action that it was felt that lives were lost because the international community had got it wrong.

I think one of the most harrowing aspects -- and I was there, I remember it very well -- was the collapse of the safe havens, those U.N.-protected enclaves that doubtless Christiane was also talking about, where we saw, effectively, U.N. peacekeepers, they were Dutch, collapse, they didn't have enough numbers to keep the Bosnian Serbs out.

Ratko Mladic, the general in charge of the Bosnian Serb army, led his troops in there in one of the worst massacres post-World War II massacres, led to 7,000, 8,000-plus young men being killed. And, of course, that's one of the indictments that Ratko Mladic faces.

The big question now in this is really, what are Serbs now in Belgrade, under immense international pressure already, going to do about handing over, you know, two of the world's...

HARRIS: Mladic, yes, yes.

(CROSSTALK)

SADLER: ... wanted war crimes suspects, Mladic and Karadzic?

HARRIS: Yes.

SADLER: What effect's that going to have? Many people don't want to see what some hardliners still consider to be their war heroes going to international war crimes tribunals. Milosevic dying in his cell is going to make it very difficult for those leaders, in an already divided country of Serbia, to hand over those suspects if and when they can get them.

HARRIS: Man.

NGUYEN: Very good point there, Brent. And I know that you're waiting to speak with Milosevic's wife, so we're going to let you go just for a moment so you can get that information, and we'll be speaking with you throughout the morning. Thank you, Brent Sadler, joining us this morning from Lebanon.

HARRIS: And Betty, we want to take you to the White House now to find out if there is any reaction to the death of the former Yugoslav president there at the White House.

And as you can see, our Elaine Quijano is standing by with us. Elaine, good morning to you.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Tony.

Nothing from the White House on this news just yet. Of course, it's still developing, still some details. But we are awaiting to see whether or not there will be a statement. But I can tell you what is on the agenda, what was on the agenda, and continues to be on the agenda, Iraq. That is really going to be President Bush's main focus today, that'll be front and center, really, for the next few weeks.

At this hour, in fact, the president is going to be meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and another top official to talk about a problem, to get a briefing on a problem that's really plagued U.S. forces in Iraq, and that is, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

A senior administration official describes those devices as almost the exclusive weapon of choice for both insurgents and others in Iraq who are perhaps looking to stir up sectarian strife.

Now, this meeting really represents the start of a renewed push by the Bush White House to try to make the case, once again, to the public, amid waning public support for the president's Iraq policy. Officials here, of course, are well aware that the almost daily images of bombings, of destruction, coming out of Iraq are, in fact, having an effect.

And yesterday, in fact, during a speech here in Washington, President Bush actually acknowledged the deadly sectarian violence in recent weeks after the bombing of a Shia holy site.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There are some who are trying to, obviously, sow the seeds of sectarian strife. They, they, they fear the advancement of a democracy. They blow up shrines in order to cause this Iraqi democracy that is emerging to go backwards, to not emerge. That's what you're seeing on your TV screens, you're seeing the use of violence to try to create strife...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUIJANO: Now, at the same time, President Bush said that the response by Iraqi security forces is a sign of progress. And, in fact, that's really going to be the theme for the president's next speeches. He's going to be actually making about three speeches, we're told, in the month of March. March, of course, is the three- year anniversary since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

And the first speech is actually going to be taking place on Monday. The president's focus is going to be on security. He'll spend quite a bit of time, we understand, on this issue of IEDs. And as I said, the president at this hour getting that briefing from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about how the United States military is tackling that problem.

Back to you.

HARRIS: Elaine, three years this month, huh? Just seems like a lot longer. Just seems we've been there a lot longer. I guess it's just the toll of it all. QUIJANO: Well, that's exactly why, Tony, they have decided they really need to come out and put some context, they say, on this, because they understand that it's a very difficult picture that's emerging. But they want to, in their words, sort of broaden the lens. They say it's not necessarily the complete picture that you get. You know, they say it's not the media's fault...

HARRIS: Right.

QUIJANO: ... it's not sort of anybody's fault. But they just want to make sure there is a more accurate, complete picture that's being put out there of what's going on in Iraq.

HARRIS: CNN's Elaine Quijano at the White House for us. Elaine, thank you.

NGUYEN: We have so much to tell you about this morning. Also, we've been talking about the death of Slobodan Milosevic, also going to be talking about the death of an American hostage in Iraq. There are some new developments. We're going to go to Baghdad and CNN's Aneesh Raman right after this break to have those details on Tom Fox, who was found dead a little bit earlier this week.

So stay with CNN SATURDAY MORNING for that, right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: News that American hostage Tom Fox was found murdered spread quickly through the Quaker community in Virginia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARGE EPSTEIN, QUAKER PEACE ACTIVIST: He was there just to say, I know you're a human being, just like me, and that until I can recognize that about you, and we can recognize that about one another, there isn't a prayer that we're going to have peace.

He was there to listen below all of the rhetoric, to listen to the things that unite us and not the things that divide us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: CNN's Aneesh Raman joins us from Baghdad, where the investigation into Fox's death is under way.

Aneesh, good morning to you. And let us try to understand, the Christian Peacemaker teams, to the best of our information, they were there trying to work to help civilians and to try to, as the name indicates, make peace in that region, correct?

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. Part of what they were doing here, what they are doing, they remain here, is to also get the release of Iraqis that are under U.S. custody, Iraqis that are being detained, they believe, without cause. That is, in the end, the demands that those who may have killed Tom Fox made to the U.S. officials, that they release all prisoners in Iraq.

But Tom Fox, a man who is here fighting for peace, working for peace, instead now a casualty of war, the Christian Peacekeepers team making a statement earlier today about his life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We mourn the loss of Tom Fox, who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAMAN: Now, Tony, Tom Fox's body was found, we understand, on Thursday, Iraqi officials telling us Iraqi police first came upon the body, wrapped in a blanket, a gunshot to the head. His hands and feet were bound. He showed signs of torture.

They then handed the remains over to the U.S. military. The FBI confirming the identity, that it was, in fact, Tom Fox.

The fate now remains uncertain for the three other Western hostages, other members of that group, who are still in custody, two Canadians and a British national. They were who we last saw on a tape that was released dated February 28. On that tape, earlier this week, we did not see Tom Fox, Tony.

HARRIS: And Aneesh, the reality of the situation is that when we're talking about Americans who were taken hostage in Iraq, it usually doesn't end well, does it?

RAMAN: Well, the U.S. government, for obvious reasons, does not negotiate with any of the hostage takers. We know there are at least seven, we believe, Americans that have either been abducted or are currently unaccounted for in Iraq. And so what we've seen happen, and whenever a situation like this arises, the U.S. embassy has a working group that works feverishly to try and secure any intelligence as to the whereabouts, to give the aid to the U.S. military to go and rescue.

As well, the Iraq government tries to establish communication through back channels. But Americans, at times, are released, but they are never -- sorry, at times rescued, but none have been released, Tony.

HARRIS: Yes. CNN's Aneesh Raman for us in Baghdad. Aneesh, thank you.

Tom Fox's friends from the Langley Hill Meeting House will hold a news conference this morning at 11:00 Eastern. CNN will continue to bring you new developments on this story.

NGUYEN: Well, there's some other developments to tell you about, dealing with the weather outside and what you're going to be facing today. We have Reynolds Wolf, a new guy on our team.

HARRIS: Hey, Reynolds.

NGUYEN: He's a wolf man.

(WEATHER REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Boy, it's been a busy morning up here on the desk. We have a lot of news going on today.

Reynolds Wolf, I don't know how it is in the Weather Center. But if you're as busy as we are, this has been quite a day.

(LAUGHTER)

(WEATHER FORECAST)

HARRIS: All right. It is the most deadly cancer in America on today's "HOUSE CALL." Senior medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta answers questions about lung cancer prevention and the dangers of secondhand smoke. That's after this short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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