The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ( ICTY ), Carla del Ponte, demanded that an official lawyer be appointed to defend Slobodan Milosevic , ITAR-TASS reports.

She motivated this, in particular, by medical reports on the defendant’s health, which were made public here by prosecutor Jeffrey Nice.

According to doctors' opinions, the ex-president of Yugoslavia did not properly follow their recommendations for maintaining normal blood pressure. Moreover, doctors claim that Slobodan Milosevic took “other medications” that they did not prescribe for him. All this gave Jeffrey Nice reason to declare that the former Yugoslav leader is no longer able to independently carry out his defense.

Slobodan Milosevic himself once again categorically rejected the proposal to appoint an official lawyer for him, since he does not recognize the legitimacy of the Hague Tribunal. “I cannot accept that you are not giving me the opportunity to tell the whole truth,” he said. “We will find ourselves in an absurd situation where I will be able to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, but at the same time I will not be able to do the same with witnesses on my side,” the ex-President of Yugoslavia emphasized.

In turn, his legal adviser Zdenko Tomanovic warned that if Slobodan Milosevic is assigned a lawyer against his will, “he will not cooperate with him.”

Milosevic refused a lawyer