Investigation of the Pakrac Valley Crimes Reopened

AIM Zagreb, October 14, 2000

In early October 1991 Tomislav Mercep's death squadron disembarked in the Pakrac Valley: this gang consisted of people with dubious past, persons for whom the war and murders were the only chance to prove themselves, frustrated young men whom someone very powerful convinced of their importance and entrusted with the task of exterminating the Serbs in the Pakrac region; it was predominantly a group of killers whom the public called the Croatian knights, but who proved their valour by liquidating the Serbian civilians brought from the surrounding villages or by killing a twelve-year old girl Aleksandra Zec from Zagreb. On those foggy October days in 1991, Mercep's fighters broke into Serb houses in the villages around Pakrac, Garesnica and Kutina or took their victims to Zagreb, after which they tortured them in the dressing-room of the football club "Jedinstvo" in the Pakrac Valley.

On those foggy days the following people were taken from their homes: Mirko Cicvara, Bozo Velebit, Blagoje Zabrdac, Djuro Brkanjac, Pero Rajcevic, Veljko Stojakovic, Ivan Drekovic, Nada Radakovic, Milan Jerinic, two members of the Vuckovic family and two of the Ignjatovics, etc. They never returned to their homes, and today their families can only guess what had happened to them. Milos Ivosevic, Marko Grujic and Rade Pajic were brought to the Death Valley from Zagreb. They also never came back. Neither have Aleksandar Sasa Antic and Ina Zoricic-Nuic. Rare were those who survived the torture in the Pakrac Valley, and even those sometimes regretted that Munib Suljic, Igor Mikola, Sinisa Rimac or one of their buddies have not put them out of their misery.

Nine years later, early this October, the Croatian Minister of Justice, Stjepan Ivanisevic, announced that the "reopening of files on the Pakrac Valley" was expected, while Deputy Public Prosecutor Slavko Zadnik explained that the Minister probably had in mind "the case of Serbian civilians who were killed in 1991 in the Marino Selo camp and afterwards thrown into the fish-pond".

During those nine bloody years the local judiciary behaved like a reed shaken by the wind of Tudjman's regime opening files on the Pakrac Valley murders when the political situation so required, but also taking good care not to inconvenience any of the criminals too much. The result is fascinating: at this moment not a single person is serving prison for crimes committed in the Valley near Pakrac. Namely, this is quite a logical consequence of the attitude of the then Croatian opposition - and today's authorities - that it would be best to keep silent and not probe too much into criminal activities of the Croatian knights. Finally, it is also a logical result of the way the Croatian public treated the crimes of "our boys" during past nine years - like an ostrich - burying its head into the sand - so that, in all likelihood, the today's public stuttering about the killings of the Serbian civilians in the Valley and Gospic is the consequence of the sand that got stuck in their throats.

The criminal group under Tomislav Mercep's command became interesting for the Croatian judiciary in early 1992 when the investigation into the murder of the Zagreb family Zec was opened: at that time the "Mercep's gang" - Munib Suljic, Nebojsa Hodak, Igor Mikola, Snjezana Zivanovic and Sinisa Rimac, simultaneously with the story about the Zec family told many gory details linked to their activities in the Pakrac Valley. According to the official police note, Mercep explained that he knew about "some problems" his unit had made, which is why a criminal report was filed against sixteen members of that unit.

The judicial interest for the criminal gang suddenly deflated because of the procedural error of the investigating judge, who forgot to question the suspects in the presence of their defence attorneys, so that statements which were swarming with details on torture and killings became invalid overnight. At the same time, this was the first and only attempt of the Croatian judiciary at prosecuting Tomislav Mercep, the then advisor to the Minister of the Interior. All after that was just a farce.

And that farce started in the distant 1994 with the statement of Milan Vukovic, the then President of the Supreme Court and today's judge of the Constitutional Court who, defying the facts and common sense stated that the crimes in the Pakrac Valley were "pure fabrication". Vladimir Seks promptly added his view that criminalisation of Mercep's activities "is aimed at smearing the entire Patriotic War, especially the volunteers" in order to present the "Croatian state policy as tolerant of the war crimes". In the meantime, the Split weekly "Feral Tribune" featured extensive texts with details of the Pakrac crimes. The state leadership reacted to all these bloody findings only in mid 1995 when President of the Republic Franjo Tudjman decorated Sinisa Rimac, a fighter and member of the First Croatian Guard Corps with the Order of Nikola Subic Zrinski "for courageous acts committed during war" and a year later added another medal to his chest - the Order of the Croatian Cross. Participation in the killing of Aleksandar Sasa Antic and a shot fired at the back of the head of the twelve-year old Aleksandra Zec is one of Rimic's acts of outstanding bravery. In the meantime, the Croatian judiciary was not idle: it ruled that "Feral Tribune" should pay Tomislav Mercep 130 thousand kunas on account of damages for the anguish sustained, while similar verdicts soon became common practice when commander of the notorious unit from the Pakrac Valley was concerned.

In early September 1997, "Feral" published a shocking confession of Miro Bajramovic, a member of Mercep's unit, who told the public the story about the killing and torture of innocent people in the dressing room of the "Jedinstvo" football club. Because of the unprecedented shock the story caused - namely, in the same public which for years buried its head into the sand at every mention of the Valley - Franjo Tudjman personally ordered the reopening of the investigation and the arrest of Miro Bajramovic, Munib Suljic and Igor Mikola. Investigation that ensued resulted in a short indictment and practically no proof: the only murder that they were charged with was that of Aleksandar Sasa Antic, while other counts of the indictment related to the "illegal depravation of liberty" and "illegal acquisition of property".

The indictment definitely went up in smoke when Branko Velagic and Nikola Peles, taxi drivers from Kutina, appeared before the panel of judges as key witnesses to Antic's murder, i.e. more precisely they were the ones who dug up the grave for his body. During the investigation they explained in detail the way in which Suljic, Mikola and Rimac liquidated Sasa Antic, but before the Court they suffered the total loss of memory about the events in the Valley of Pakrac.

"I can hardly remember anything. They woke us up during the night, gave us a shovel and took us to a meadow where we dug up a hole. After that they shot at something, I don't know whether it was a man or a bag", said Nikola Peles. Only after the judge read him parts of his statement given during investigation, Peles unwillingly remembered one Antic Aleksandar, some Pakrac Valley and one captive Nikola Peles who "did not have such bad time at the mentioned location as the newspapers claimed". Similar were statements of other witnesses so that the panel of judges could do nothing else but pass an acquitting sentence: the sentence had to be such, because it did not cross anyone's mind to look seriously for the bodies of the killed or to talk to the families of the people who were taken from their homes in October 1991. Taken never to return.

Nine years later, Vladimir Seks is once again screaming from the Assembly rostrum about "defamation of the Patriotic War" with every mention of the murders in the Pakrac Valley, while at squares and streets Croatian volunteers sign petitions against the criminalisation of that same war which the new authorities and the regime-controlled media are unisonly spattering with mud and lies. His words delivered from the Parliament's balcony met with the approval of all kinds of associations created during the Patriotic War, while Zvonimir Trusic, one of the wardens of death camps in the Pakrac Valley directs their reactions. When someone mentions from the Assembly rostrum that "our boys" did kill and slaughter in the Valley and around Gospic, that same Trusic orders his companions to shit their ears. For, the only purpose the "Croatian knights" have for ears is to keep them in jars.

Ivica Djikic