Ding, dong, the witch is dead....

I knew it would take a big event to get my attention. All of the recent posturing over "give us Mladic" had gotten old. Well, my wish was granted.

Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, the so-called "butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed during his country's breakup, was found dead Saturday in his prison cell. He was 64.
Milosevic, who suffered chronic heart ailments and high blood pressure, apparently died of natural causes and was found in his bed, the U.N. tribunal said, without giving an exact time of death.
He had been examined following frequent complaints of fatigue or ill health that delayed his trial, but the tribunal could not immediately say when his last medical checkup was. All detainees at the center in Scheveningen are checked by a guard every half hour.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060311/ap_on_re_eu/milosevic&printer=1;_ylt=At7JnUsHmK9HACViLlp8OHpbbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

His trial, which has continued in fits and starts since it began in February 2002, recessed just last week while the court weighed whether to grant his request to subpoena former President Bill Clinton as a witness.
Mr. Milosevic had complained in recent weeks that his health was worsening, and he pressed the court to allow him to seek treatment at the Bakoulev Scientific Center for Cardiovascular Surgery in Moscow, where his wife and son live. But the court denied his request, saying there was no reason that Russian doctors could not come to The Hague to treat him — a decision the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized Saturday after Mr. Milosevic's death.
On Saturday, one of his lawyers, Steven Kay, said he had recently talked with Mr. Milosevic about whether he had been thinking about suicide.
"He said to me a few weeks ago, 'I haven't fought this case for as long as I have with any intention to do any harm to myself,' " BBC television quoted Mr. Kay as saying. "He has a history of suicide in his family — both his parents — but as far as he was concerned, his attitude to me was quite the opposite from that. He was determined to keep fighting his case."
Less than a week ago, a crucial witness in Mr. Milosevic's trial, the former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, who was a serving a 13-year sentence in the same prison, committed suicide in his cell.
The tribunal said Saturday that it would not give a news conference about Mr. Milosevic's death, continuing a recent pattern of only terse communication that brought criticism after Mr. Babic killed himself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/international/europe/12hague.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print