The Spectre of Crime Haunting Podunavlje

AIM Zagreb, September 30, 2000

Recent urgent arrival of Goran Granic, Ph.D., Deputy of the Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan, to Borovo Selo where the exhumation of victims of Great-Serbian aggression from a nearby well started that morning, as well as the arrival of Croatian Defence Minister Ivica Pancic several days later to Dalj Planina, near Erdut, where remains of another war victim were discovered in a village well, were evident signs of the desire of the Croatian Government to strike a balance in the persecution and punishment of war criminals. And when early this week (September 26), Minister of the Interior, Sime Lucin, said that 121 persons suspected of having committed war crimes during the last war “will not be freely walking around Podunavlje much longer", after which a judge of the District Court in Osijek, Mladen Filipovic, once again posted on the billboard the decision on starting the investigation against and placing in detention the mentioned suspects, mostly of Serbian nationality, it became clear that Racan's Government thought that it had to do something to neutralise the offensive of the radical right wing parties.

The arrest of Tihomir Oreskovic and Ivan Andabak, as well another ten suspects of war crimes committed in Gospic in 1991 and in Ahmici in 1993, have provoked fierce protests of numerous war veterans' associations which, encouraged by the support of the right wing parties, have established headquarters all over Croatia for the defence of the dignity of the patriotic war. The incredible and unexplainable publicity which these headquarters received, especially in the most influential medium – on Croatian Television - has created the impression that the whole Croatia had risen in protest against the arrest of war crime suspects. It was probably then that someone in the Government concluded that it would be necessary to strike a balance in order to appease the public, which is why the campaign against Serbian war criminals was launched hastily.

The statement of Minister Lucin about 121 war crime suspects who are peacefully walking around Podunavlje, dates back to the times of HDZ rule, same as the Law on Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal and the Amnesty Law, which the today's opposition HDZ is skilfully planting to the current authorities as a proof of their anti-Croatian sentiments.

The official Zagreb regularly used Serbian war crimes for the purposes of daily politics: Tudjman needed that to ease the internal tensions caused by the dissatisfaction of refugees, numerous court trials in absentia were held, although, practically speaking, they made no sense and were only a red herring for the radical public demanding some kind of satisfaction. When in 1997, in the final stages of peaceful reintegration of Podunavlje, the international community put pressure on Tudjman, it was no one else but him (and not Mesic or Racan) who agreed to reduce the number of war crime suspects responsible for the sufferings of the Croats to 25! The omnipotent VONS (Defence and National Security Council) made that decision on Tudjman's proposal, because the Croatian President wanted to conclude the process of the reintegration of Podunavlje on time, i.e. by January 15, 1998.

Jacques Paul Klein, the then transitional administrator of UNTAES, a region in the Croatian Podunavlje which was the only remaining part of Martic's former Krajina after "Flash" and "Storm", asked Tudjman to publish the list of non-pardoned persons in Podunavlje. Klein wanted this in order to avoid confusion in the area under his administration and to be able to guarantee to the Serbian side that upon the return of the Croatian authorities they would not be persecuted. The American General, who undertook to carry out peaceful reintegration, feared that the Serbs might leave this area en masse, so that he asked Tudjman's guarantees also regarding a precise definition of the "quota of war criminals" to which the Law on General Amnesty would not apply.

At that time, Tudjman entrusted the then Minister of Justice, Miroslav Separovic, to reduce all the previous list of war crime suspects to a "reasonable number" so that the Public Prosecutor's Office received an urgent instruction to subsume most of earlier war crime qualifications under the Amnesty Law. Namely, previously the list of war crime suspects included over thousand names. It was first reduced to 800 names, and then on March 15, 1997, Separovic presented a list with 150 war crime suspects and stated that it was final and that it would not be expanded further. On June 2, this year, during his first post-war visit to Beli Manastir, Tudjman repeated this claim by saying that there would be no new lists. This was quite contrary to the fact that the statute of limitation did not apply to war crimes.

However, according to the transitional administrator of Podunavlje, Jacques Paul Klein, that list was also too long. Separovic himself gave him the reason for such a claim. The list of war crime suspects, prepared with haste and rather carelessly, included the names of some dead persons, people over 70 years, elderly women. Seeing this, Klein said that it was a "list of people on which no files existed and who were included without any previous verification". Tudjman confessed this to Vojislav Stanimirovic, the main Serbian negotiator at that time, in a tête-à-tête talk about war crimes. According to rumours, the Croatian President said to Stanimirovic that the list included persons who did not belong there. And indeed, Klein and Tudjman soon agreed: the list of potential war criminals would be shortened to 25 names, i.e. only those who were legally sentenced. This was a slap in the face of Minister Separovic, the entire legislation, as well as all those who thought that war crimes did not fall under the statute of limitation.

Out of 150 names on Separovic's list, in 25 cases persons were sentenced by a binding judgement, in 15 instances no final judgement has been handed down; in 38 cases the main hearing was still underway; 30 cases were still under investigation; 23 cases remained to be decided by the Public Prosecutor's Office; and 19 criminal complaints were still being processed. All 125 cases - apart from those 25 from the "final Tudjman-Klein list" - were then swept under the carpet. Today 121 names from that list have reappeared in public.

"I shall appeal. I have done nothing. Not even as a child, let alone later have I hurt anyone. If I had been guilty I would have left Baranja", said one of the suspects from the current list, Slobodan Djuric from Beli Manastir. Nikola Stojanovic, today a teacher of physical education in a school in Beli Manastir - also on the list of war crime suspects - said something similar: "Several days ago I received from Vukovar a document which shows that I had been pardoned. I do not know why are they dragging my name through court: if I had felt guilty I would have left Baranja, the same way as many who felt thus have done".

The huge heap of dirty linen that the new authorities have inherited from the old ones includes the never resolved problem of war crimes committed in Eastern Slavonia. Tudjman resolved that problem as it suited him best at given moments, irrespective of facts, courts and justice. That is why it would be good to finally bring this problem, which has been persistently swept under the carpet, into the open in order to punish the culprits, but also to exonerate the innocent from all responsibility. The only thing that might be bad in this whole affair would be if the new authorities were doing this just so as to strike a balance and not to do justice.

Drago Hedl

(AIM)