I was one of the last western journalists to meet Slobodan Milosevic. Having been called to The Hague as a potential witness, I spent an hour in his cell in January last year. Like most who met him, I found him polite and intelligent. "We will win," he told me. "Freedom is a universal value. They have no evidence against me." If the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia were a proper court of law, the charges against him would have been dismissed long ago. Unfortunately, it is a highly politicised organ, created on the initiative of the very...