Slobodan Milosevic faces fresh charges at the United Nations war crimes tribunal tomorrow. He is accused of orchestrating ethnic cleansing in Croatia at the height of his power in the Balkans a decade ago.
In the second of three indictments against him, prosecutors will accuse Milosevic of spearheading a joint criminal enterprise to kill or expel Croats and other non-Serbs from about a third of Croatia between August 1991 and June 1992 to create a Serb-dominated state.
The 60-year-old former Yugoslav leader will be asked to plead on charges of being responsible for hundreds of deaths and the imprisonment and forced deportation of thousands in the indictment for crimes allegedly committed in Croatia.
The indictment says Slobodan Milosevic, acting alone or in concert with other known and unknown members of a joint criminal enterprise, planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the persecution of Croats and other non-Serb civilians.
The Croatia indictment charges him with 10 counts of crimes against humanity, nine counts of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and 13 counts of violating the laws or customs of war.
Serbia and Croatia fought a war in 1991 after the break-up of Yugoslavia. A civil war involving Serbs, Muslims and Croats raged in Bosnia from 1992-95.
At his initial appearance before the UN tribunal in July, Milosevic refused to plead on charges in the first indictment for alleged crimes against humanity in Kosovo in 1999. The court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
Prosecutors signed the new Croatia indictment in late September but it was not approved by judges at the international court until earlier this month.
A third indictment, for alleged war crimes in Bosnia, including the court's gravest charge of genocide, is to be completed within weeks, raising the prospect of a lengthy and complex trial covering Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia.
Milosevic, who is the most prominent European leader to face an international war crimes trial since Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg after World War Two, is set to continue his defiant solitary stand after refusing to appoint a defence counsel.
But lawyers known as amici curiaeor friends of the court , appointed by the court to secure a fair trial, will be in the courtroom to assist the three-man bench and prosecution with preparations for trial.
Milosevic has repeatedly criticised NATO for its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 after a Serb crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.