The Dictator buried in a garden

A week after his death in a prison cell in the Hague, Slobodan Milosevic's body was taken to Pozarevac, the small town, fifty miles from Belgrade where he grew up. It was a pathetic end for an ex-President. Even Milosevic's widow failed to turn up as he was laid to rest in his home town although there was a good reason for that.

Slobodan Milosevic – known as the 'Butcher of the Balkans', and the man who brought war to the former Yugoslavia - had asked to be buried in his back garden, next to his favourite lime tree. It was a solution the state was happy to accede in, because Milosevic’s supporters were determined to get their former leader a state funeral, which would have offended millions and could have soured international relations.

Supposedly, it was under the lime tree that Milosevic first kissed his teenage future wife Mira - a woman now known in Serbia as 'Lady Macbeth' for her murderous intentions towards her husband's enemies. Despite this sentimental gesture, Mira failed to turn up to Milosevic's funeral – which is hardly surprising, as she chose to stay in her self-imposed exile in Moscow, rather than return to Serbia, where she faces corruption charges.

On the day of the funeral the coffin set off on its strange last trip. It stopped outside Serbia's parliament building, where thousands of supporters gathered, chanting 'Slobo', before it was whisked down a drab dual carriageway. After two hours' drive, past muddy fields and pine-covered hills, it arrived in Pozarevac. In the central square, hundreds of pensioners gathered beneath a large portrait of the late president. Mourners clapped and threw flowers when his silver hearse arrived.

The coffin then drove to Mira's suburban villa where bouquets and candles had been left outside the green front gate. A second plot has already been dug for Mira next to her husband, neighbours said, and there are plenty of people who think she can’t take up her residence too soon.

Hearse photograph by femaletrumpeter02, used under a creative commons attribution licence

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