Arrest warrant issued for Milosevic widow

SERBIA:An international arrest warrant has been issued for the widow of former Yugoslav and Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, and is being prepared for their son, according to Belgrade media.

Mira Markovic (64) and Marko Milosevic (32) are being investigated for allegedly leading a cigarette smuggling racket that netted them tens of millions of euro during the 1990s, when President Milosevic led Serbia into war, poverty and international isolation.

Both fled Serbia after Milosevic was ousted in 2000 and are believed to be in Russia, from where they declined to return home for his funeral last year after he died while being tried for genocide at the UN war crimes court in The Hague.

The daily Danas newspaper yesterday quoted police and judicial sources as saying Serbia's special court for organised crime had placed the arrest warrant for Ms Markovic with Interpol, the international police organisation. The FoNet news agency cited Serb officials as saying her property in Serbia and abroad would be seized and bank accounts frozen.

Announcing the charges against the pair last week, Serbia's organised crime prosecutor Slobodan Radovanovic said they would be "treated as the organisers of a criminal group dealing in the illegal trade of tobacco".

Ms Markovic has been the subject of previous arrest warrants over alleged abuse of power and embezzlement, but she has never been convicted and denies all charges, as does her son, who was a prominent figure in Belgrade during his father's autocratic rule.

Belgrade has pledged to crack down on organised crime and catch fugitive war crimes suspects in return for restarting talks on closer ties with the European Union, and recently jailed the assassins of prime minister Zoran Djindjic. He was killed in 2003 by mobsters and former soldiers who wanted to return Mr Milosevic's allies to power.

Mr Radovanovic said this week that it was his "professional and human obligation" to investigate who ordered the assassination, which has been linked to circles surrounding the current conservative nationalist prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica.

Two of Mr Kostunica's close aides were initially included in the investigation into the murder, but were never charged.

Mr Radovanovic has vowed to focus on public statements made by Serb politicians around the time of Mr Djindjic's death, saying they were "part of a wider context that needs to be investigated in order to determine what led to the prime minister's assassination".