Milosevic's Body to Be Flown Out As Row Over Death Goes on

The body of Slobodan Milosevic was on its way out of the Netherlands last night after the former Serbian leader's son flew in from Russia to collect his remains.

A hearse carrying the body of the only former head of state to be indicted on war crimes charges left the forensic institute in The Hague, where pathologists had conducted an autopsy. The Dutch news agency ANP reported that the body was being taken to the mortuary at Amsterdam airport under police escort. It was unclear whether it would be flown to Serbia or to Russia, where Milosevic's widow, Mirjana Markovic, and son live in exile.

The hearse left The Hague after Marko Milosevic, the dictator's son, spent more than two hours at the forensic institute reviewing the findings of the postmortem examination, which concluded that the former Serbian leader died of a heart attack on Saturday.

The Dutch authorities refused to allow four Russian pathologists, who had flown in from Moscow with Milosevic's son, to carry out a second autopsy on Dutch soil. This is thought to explain the speed with which the body was moved.

The Russian pathologists and family dispute the initial autopsy because they say that doctors from the international war crimes tribunal behaved negligently, contributing to Milosevic's death. Marko Milosevic said: "He got killed. He didn't die. He got killed. There's a murder."

Leo Bokeria, head of Moscow's Bakulev clinic, who led the team of Russian pathologists, said that Milosevic would still be alive if he had been allowed to travel to Russia for medical treatment.

"It's a great regret that they did not heed our numerous appeals for an examination," he told AP television. "The point is that a man who had suffered from a complex of illnesses of the heart and vascular system was not examined adequately, and thus naturally he could not be cured."

The war crimes tribunal, which formally terminated the trial of Milosevic yesterday after his "untimely death", rebutted the family's claims. Tribunal officials told the Associated Press that Milosevic may have been responsible for his own death after he took unprescribed drugs in the detention centre near The Hague.

Doctors at the centre concluded that Milosevic took the drugs to undermine treatment for an acute heart condition. This was designed to strengthen his request to be allowed to fly to Russia for medical treatment.

Belgrade rejected the family's claims that it was preventing a funeral taking place on Serbian soil. Marko Milosevic said the family would be forced to bury his father temporarily in Russia because the Serb authorities refused to guarantee free passage for his mother, who is wanted on charges of abusing power.

Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, said that the funeral could take place in Belgrade, after a court in the capital suspended an arrest warrant against Markovic, who fled to Moscow in 2003 to avoid the abuse of power charges. "A funeral is a civilised act that should be respected," Mr Kostunica said.

But the Belgrade court also ordered that Markovic's passport be seized. This would make it impossible for her to leave Serbia if she returned home for the funeral and force her to face the charges.

The Russian authorities remained conspicuously silent. The foreign ministry, Kremlin, and Moscow city government all declined to comment yesterday on either the death or the funeral arrangements.

President Vladimir Putin would be under pressure from the country's political right to attend any Moscow funeral for a figure seen domestically by many as a "Slavic hero". But he would also be anxious to not be seen to mourn an alleged war criminal during Russia's chairmanship of the G8 group of industrial nations.