Serbian state prosecutors said Tuesday that charges against the fugitive widow of deposed leader Slobodan Milosevic had been altered to prevent them from expiring, according to dpa. A trial would be started in absentia to prevent Mirjana Markovic from escaping justice, the officials in Belgrade said. "This means that there will be no statute of limitation and that Markovic can be tried even if she remains at large," the spokesman for the state prosecutor's office, Tomo Zoric, told reporters. "The prosecution also recommended beginning a trial in absentia." Markovic, 68, who fled to Russia in early 2003, was originally charged in 2002 for using her influence to illegally allocate a state-owned apartment to her grandchild's babysitter. She is now being accused of abuses of office, a more serious charge than the previous one and punishable by up to 12 years prison. While she never held a government post, she is believed to have had a huge influence on her husband's actions. The Belgrade daily Press on Tuesday quoted Markovic's lawyer, Zdenko Tomanovic, as saying that her charges would expire on October 13 and that she would be able to return home after that without fear of arrest or trial. That would no longer be the case following the latest measures taken by the prosecution and the Interpol warrant for Markovic's arrest would remain in effect, a high-ranking justice official said later Tuesday. "These decisions created a procedural basis to keep her on the Interpol list and preclude her from outrunning justice," the justice ministry secretary, Slobodan Homen, said in a statement. Tomanovic had also told Press that the investigation against the role of Markovic and her son, Marko Milosevic, 36, in the multi-million-dollar business of smuggling cigarettes during the 1990s had been suspended. Homen denied the statement. "It is exactly activities like the smuggling of tobacco which made Markovic and others like her enormously rich," he said. "Exactly because of that it is enormously important to try and sentence Markovic." Marko Milosevic saw charges against him dropped last week due to expiring statutes of limitation. He had been accused of beating and torturing activists from Milosevic's opposition and has been on the run, hiding in Moscow, since Milosevic was toppled from power in October 2000. Failure to prosecute Milosevic's family has added to the disappointment of many Serbs on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Milosevic's fall, October 5. Victims of the regime and their families have accused Markovic of instigating repression, even murder, particularly in the high-profile cases of the killings of journalist Slavko Curuvija in 1999 and politician Ivan Stambolic in 2000. Marko Milosevic turned to business in his early 20s, using his father's name to open doors and get around laws, according to allegations linked to the tobacco-smuggling probe. In the Milosevics' hometown of Pozarevac, 80 kilometres east of Belgrade, he operated a huge open-air disco, a radio station and a bakery, while in the capital he owned an expensive cosmetics shop. The elder Milosevic was arrested on corruption charges in 2001, but was extradited to stand trial for genocide at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague the following year. Serbian authorities also linked him, in absentia, to Stambolic's murder. But he died of a heart attack in 2006, before any trial could conclude, aged 64. During his heavy-handed 12-year reign, he involved Serbia in wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and allowed political allies to effectively control the economy.
