The Big Embarrassment.(Milosevic Slobodan)

Slobodan Milosevic's new home has virtually every convenience. The high-security cell at Belgrade's Central Prison has a peephole so his guards can check on him in the toilet, and a hatchway so they can deliver his meals, served on foam plastic plates. After the jailers took away his shoelaces, his necktie and his belt, his blue gabardine pants kept falling down, says the warden. Finally the fallen strongman's once dreaded wife, Socialist Party leader Mirjana Markovic, was allowed to bring her husband a tracksuit with an elastic waistband. She arrived dressed in widow's weeds.

No one imagined things would end this way. Instead of crowing in triumph, the strongman's old opponents are filled with a strange sense of disappointment and embarrassment. When police arrived at his villa with a warrant for his arrest, he threatened. He blustered. He brandished a pistol and swore he would kill his wife, his daughter and himself rather than submit. Then he just gave up. "This is so banal," says Biljana Srbljanovic, a prominent playwright and critic of the regime. "Seeing Slobo now, I am ashamed. It turns out we were afraid of a man who was just a fool."

If it's any comfort, the humiliation is even worse for Milosevic's supporters. When he surrendered, his daughter, Marija, threw ashtrays around the living room in helpless rage. She chased him downstairs with a pistol in each hand, screaming: "Coward! Why didn't you kill yourself?" As police tucked her father into an armored BMW, she stormed outside with both guns blazing. No one was hit, and police managed to subdue her. She has been charged with weapons violations and interfering with police. Afterward a search of the villa turned up a mini-arsenal of machine guns and other weapons.

Milosevic can expect a long, safe stay behind bars while his daughter cools off. Last week the International War Crimes Tribunal formally served warrants for his arrest and transfer to The Hague. Prosecutor Carla del Ponte insisted that the defendant be turned over immediately, and the Bush administration wasted no time before certifying Yugoslavia's cooperation with the tribunal, thereby officially unfreezing $40 million in badly needed U.S. aid.

Whereupon Yugoslavia's president, Vojislav Kostunica, vowed he would never hand Milosevic over to The Hague. Some press reports said the surrender's price had included a written promise that Milosevic would never be extradited to the tribunal. But the government's chief negotiator in the standoff, Cedomir Jovanovic, denies any such deal. Instead, he says, President Kostunica and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic issued a signed statement that Milosevic was being arrested as a common criminal under Yugoslav law. Jovanovic insists the document said nothing about what would happen after that arrest. Officials in the Serbian government have already drafted a law to allow the extradition of Milosevic on war-crimes charges. They say the handover could come as early as May.

Milosevic is in no hurry. Compared with the inmates of most Yugoslav jails, he's in heaven. Milosevic and a growing number of his former aides are held at Central Prison in a wing his Belgrade lawyer, Toma Fila, describes as "the Hyatt." His three-by-four-meter cell (complete with hot water and its own shower) would normally hold six prisoners, but he has the place all to himself. He gets the Belgrade daily papers and a daily exercise session outdoors. His wife is allowed to visit and bring supplies, although Fila complains that the couple have not been allowed any privacy. Reports say Milosevic is still issuing orders to ...