Milosevic detained for at least 30 days.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ Hours after brandishing a pistol, ranting about suicide and finally surrendering to police, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic Sunday was ordered by a judge to serve 30 days in jail as prosecutors investigate a string of financial crimes he is alleged to have committed.

Milosevic spent nearly four hours in a closed hearing before a judge. He was then led down a cellblock in Belgrade's four-story central prison. In stark illustration of how much his life had quickly changed, Milosevic, who until 4:50 a.m. Sunday lived in a villa, stepped into a cell that had hot and cold running water, but no television or radio.

He was allowed to keep his shoes. All books and newspapers must be okayed by the guards.

"This is a Balkan jail," Milosevic's lawyer, Toma Fila, told journalists. "It's not the Hyatt Regency."

Serbs greeted the first day of Milosevic's imprisonment with muted enthusiasm. The demise of the man who brought them bankruptcy, war and international isolation stirred little outright joy. Many Serbs have grown weary of despising him. In a nation with an average monthly wage of $50, Milosevic is viewed as a blown-out force, a deposed leader with a notorious legacy that must be put on trial and quickly forgotten.

"He destroyed our country completely," said Goran Kostic, walking with a bag of bread and apples past the prison on his way home from the market. "We are sick of him."

The government of President Vojislav Kostunica plans to eventually charge Milosevic with embezzlement, abuse of power, bribery, political assassination and robbing the state of about $6 billion in cash and gold reserves. But those wishes collide with U.S. and European demands that Milosevic be immediately extradited to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, to stand trial for alleged atrocities his regime committed in the breakaway province of Kosovo.