Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic

by Chris Stephen

Granted unprecedented access to the trial proceedings, the author investigates the first trial ever of a world leader for crimes against humanity, who has been accused of the worst human rights crimes committed in Europe since World War II.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 2004

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/182162.html[return][return]The title makes it sound as if this is a book restricted just to the one event, the Milosevic trial. In fact it's not, and what you get is a very good quick summary of the entire Yugoslav crisis from the beginning, and then also an account of the politics of the establishment of the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, before we get to the dramatic events surrounding the fall, arrest and prosecution of Milosevic. There have been surprisingly few books written since the immediate aftermath of the Bosnian war that covered the developments of the years afterwards.[return][return]Chris always struck me as a fun person, who doesn't let his sense of humour leak into his journalism perhaps as much as he should. Of course the appropriate tone for much of the testimony of the victims of Milosevic's wars is restrained outrage, and Chris does this very well. His depiction of the towns of Prijedor and Kozarac, which were very much part of my patch at the time, is totally accurate. The only factual error I caught was that Zoran Djindjic was kicked out as mayor of Belgrade in 1997 very shortly after he got the job, rather then hanging on until 2000.[return][return]I think this is a particularly good book to use as ammunition against the wingnuts who see the entire thing as a massive conspiracy against the Serbs. He doesn't quite address the ludicrous US reservations about the new International Criminal Court, but since he's not really writing for that audience I suppose it's fair enough. I see a couple of other reviewers have picked up on the fact that the book ends half-way through, before Milosevic has started defence let alone the trial being over.

[Michael Mcclelland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the blurb, read Nicholas Whyte's Super Review below (super in length and quality), there's not much else you need to know. What I find most amazing is that - at the time of review - this book's only earnt a 2.5 star average! Given that it is a superbly written account of truly world-changing events, and that you obviously know what sort of tale you're getting going in, and from which side it's going to be told, then I can only presume the low rating is due to people with a "personal issue"...



My only complaint is that the book ended too early. It seemed like it had the firm deadline that the Milosevic trial never did - it was all wrapped up very quickly. We miss out on Milosevic's defense (did the trial even get that far?), some sort of commentary on his death, whether justice was served, what people think about it, a post mortem of the court procedures (in what aspects did it succeed and fail?), there's not even a 'whatever happened to' section for the characters who didn't die or were gaoled. Perhaps there's no greater praise for this book, than I hope to endeavour to find out all this for myself. ...unless there's a new edition in the works.... ;)

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written - it was easy to read (in terms of the writing style, not the subject matter) and it was well-organized. I'm of the opinion that the general public, at least in America, knows far too little about the wars in the Balkans, and this book is a great introduction for people who don't know about them. It's also a great read for people (like myself) who know quite a bit about Balkan history. I would absolutely recommend this book.