Trial of Slobodan Milošević The 2002 – 2005 trial of Slobodan Milošević at the ICTY included hundreds of witnesses and lasted until the death of Slobodan Milošević . Milošević did not recognize the tribunal but participated in the proceedings with the larger point of presenting the Serbian view of the truth . The tribunal in this case serves not only as the court but it has a larger role of establishing what has really happened in the 1990s in Yugoslavia , and of distinguishing facts from fiction and propaganda ( which was present on all sides ) . The trial has been referred to as the " trial of the century " . Background . Milošević was indicted in May 1999 , during the Kosovo War , by the UN ' s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity in Kosovo . Charges of violating the laws or customs of war , grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Croatia and Bosnia and genocide in Bosnia were added a year and a half later . The charges on which Milošević was indicted were : genocide ; complicity in genocide ; deportation ; murder ; persecutions on political , racial or religious grounds ; inhumane acts / forcible transfer ; extermination ; imprisonment ; torture ; willful killing ; unlawful confinement ; wilfully causing great suffering ; unlawful deportation or transfer ; extensive destruction and appropriation of property , not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly ; cruel treatment ; plunder of public or private property ; attacks on civilians ; destruction or wilful damage done to historic monuments and institutions dedicated to education or religion ; unlawful attacks on civilian objects . The trial . Following Milošević ' s transfer , the original charges of war crimes in Kosovo were upgraded by adding charges of genocide in Bosnia and war crimes in Croatia . On 30 January 2002 , Milošević accused the war crimes tribunal of an " evil and hostile attack " against him . The trial began at The Hague on 12 February 2002 , with Milošević defending himself . Rade Marković stated that a written statement he had made implicating Milošević had been extracted from him by ill - treatment legally amounting to torture by named NATO officers Judge May declared this to be " irrelevant " , but Milošević stated that it was forbidden under the 1988 rules concerning evidence gained by torture . The prosecution took two years to present its case in the first part of the trial , where they covered the wars in Croatia , Bosnia and Kosovo . Throughout the two - year period , the trial was being closely followed by the public of the involved former Yugoslav republics as it covered various notable events from the war and included several high - profile witnesses . Milošević , while defending himself , read from Friedrich Naumann ' s book " Mitteleuropa " , claiming it was a long - standing objective of German foreign policy and the German liberal party in particular to " erase Serbia from the map " , citing a number of alleged wrongdoings by Germany against Serbia during the last hundred years , including the recognition of Croatia and other countries . He pointed out that Klaus Kinkel , the German Foreign Minister who proposed the creation of the tribunal , was a German liberal . During the prosecution case , 295 witnesses testified and 5 , 000 exhibits were presented to the court recording a mass of evidence . After the presentation of the prosecution case , the Trial Chamber , on 16 June 2004 , rejected a defense motion to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence and ruled in accordance with Rule 98bis , that the prosecution case contains evidence capable of supporting a conviction on all 66 counts . The Defense was given the same amount of time as the prosecution to present its case . There were in total 466 hearing days , four hours per day . 40 hours were left in the Defense case , and the trial was on schedule to end by the end of the spring . Death of Milošević . Milošević was found dead in his cell on 11 March 2006 , in the UN war crimes tribunal ' s detention center , located in the Scheveningen section of The Hague , Netherlands . Autopsies soon established that Milošević had died of a heart attack . He had been suffering from heart problems and high blood pressure . Many suspicions were voiced to the effect that the heart attack had been caused or made possible deliberately – by the ICTY , according to sympathizers , or by himself , according to critics . Milošević death occurred shortly after the Tribunal denied his request to seek specialized medical treatment at a cardiology clinic in Russia . ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte delivered her public statement following Milošević ' s death :