Mira Markovic, wife of Slobodan Milosevic, dies at 76

Mira Markovic, widow of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, died in Russia at the age of 76.

His death was confirmed at the BBC by a close family friend, Milutin Mrkonjic.

Known as "Lady Macbeth of the Balkans", Markovic was an important political figure in the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Before being arrested in 2001, she was one of the most trusted and influential advisers of her husband before escaping to Russia two years later.

Mr. Milosevic died in 2006 when he was detained in the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands. He had been accused of genocide and other war crimes for his key role in the wars of the 1990s, which had torn apart the Balkans.

• Mira Markovic: the power behind Milosevic

They married for four decades and were almost inseparable until Milosevic's extradition.

While Mrs. Markovic owed her political influence to her closest confidante, she also had her own political party, the United Left Neo-Communist Yugoslavia (JUL).

Before meeting her husband, Ms. Markovic had a troubled childhood. Her mother was a partisan fighter captured by the Nazis in 1942.

Under torture, she apparently revealed secrets. A narrative suggests that after his release, his own father – Mrs. Markovic's grandfather – allegedly ordered the execution of his daughter for treason.

In 2003, Ms Markovic fled Serbia, where she was accused of abuse of power and suspected of cigarette smuggling and political badbadination.

Gathered by tragic family stories

By Aleksandra Niksic, Serbian editor of BBC News

Markovic and Milosevic became enamored of their childhood in Pozarevac, Milosevic's hometown, and married in 1965. Those who knew them often claimed that the couple had been reunited to share a tragic family story. during the Second World War.

They had two children – his daughter Marija and his son Marko, who lived in Russia with Markovic. The daughter Marija Milosevic was separated from the family after her father's death in 2006 and lives in neighboring Montenegro.

The Serbian opposition parties called it "the red witch" because of its political stance. She fled to Russia after Serbian justice began to investigate a case of corruption and murder of journalists and political opponents.

Milosevic's brother, Borislav, who had previously been ambbadador to Moscow, reportedly organized the move, as well as the asylum for her and her son Marko.