Chanting "Treason!" and "Let's rise up!" about 15,000 supporters of Slobodan Milosevic rallied Monday to protest his extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal. The rally, held in front of the federal Parliament by supporters of Milosevic's Socialist and allied ultra-nationalist Radical party, was the biggest of three pro-Milosevic protests organized since his extradition on Thursday.
"Our ancestors are ashamed of you, you'll all go to hell," said one of the banners directed at Serbian government. The protesters demanded new elections and chanted "Slobo, we'll get you back!"
Zoran Djindjic, the Serbian prime minister behind Thursday's sudden extradition, has said that all other Serb suspects living in Yugoslavia — believed to number about a dozen — will soon join Milosevic in The Hague, Netherlands where the tribunal is located.
Serbia is by far the larger of the two remaining republics in Yugoslavia and effectively determines Yugoslav policies, despite the existence of a separate, federal Yugoslav government.
As Milosevic's supporters rallied in Belgrade, his lawyers arrived in the Netherlands to prepare him for his first appearance before the war crimes tribunal Tuesday, and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark offered to help defend him.
(People's Daily 07/03/2001)
