Norma Percy

The Death of Yugoslavia is a BBC documentary series first broadcast in 1995, and is also the name of a book written by Allan Little and Laura Silber that accompanies the series. It covers the collapse of Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars that followed. It is notable in its combination of never-before-seen archive footage interspersed with interviews of most of the main players in the conflict, including Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić, Franjo Tuđman and Alija Izetbegović.

The series was awarded with a BAFTA award in 1996 for Best Factual Series. Because of the series large amount of interviews with prominent leaders and commanders of the conflict, it has been frequently used by ICTY in war crimes prosecutions.

All the papers relating to the documentary series, including full transcripts of the many valuable interviews conducted with participants, are lodged at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, University of London.

During the trial of Slobodan Milošević before the ICTY, Judge Bonomy called the nature of much of the commentary “tendentious”. This was because there were instances in which an interview in the Serbian language was subtitled incorrectly and often in a misleading manner.