Mortal Remains as a Proof of the Crime

AIM Zagreb, December 16, 2000

Several days ago remains of 18 Serbian civilians, killed in late 1991, were dug up at the cemetery near the village of Debelo Brdo in Lika. As a part of investigation of the crimes committed by Tihomir Oreskovic and his four associates, Sajonara Culina, judge of the Rijeka District Court ordered Croatian forensic specialists to carry out exhumation. At the time of the crime, Oreskovic was the sacrosanct war lord of Gospic and was arrested only in mid September this year because there was reason to believe that during his rule at least several dozen local Serbs had been captured and murdered, which was justified by the defence of the Croatian territories from Greater Serbian aggression. None of them had uniforms nor, at least, formally tried: they were taken in great numbers to the wasteland near Gospic and summarily executed. Later on, some rare traces were found during exhumations like this one.

The first famous death pit of unfortunate Serbian civilians was precisely this one where the group from Debelo Brdo disappeared; namely, soon after they were liquidated members of the one-time Krajina army discovered their half carbonised bodies, because their previously burned corpses were left on "no-man's-land" near Lipova Glavica, somewhere between Licki Osik and Perusic.

Soldiers of the occupying Croatian Army asked to perform Dr Zoran Stankovic from the Belgrade Army Medical Centre the autopsy, after which the crime victims were buried at the mentioned cemetery. Later on, members of families of the six killed men exhumed and identified the remains of their closest relatives and buried them at the nearby grave-yards, whereby the total number of bodies in the Debelo Brdo mass grave was reduced to 18. Also, out of that number two corpses have already been identified and it is believed that those are the bodies of late Rada Diklic and Milan Pantelic.

Until today, one more exhumation was performed in the Lika region this April. It happened in Obradovic Varos, a suburb of Gospic. However, it is assumed that several discovered civilian victims were killed in an action of the Croatian Army called the Medak Pocket. That means that these people had been killed at a later stage of the war, in one of the Croatian Army actions so that the responsibility for massacre of these people rests with some other commanders.

However, Tihomir Oreskovic and four other Gospic masters of life and death, were arrested and put under investigation on the basis of very reliable circumstantial evidence and testimonies of numerous participants in these events, both Serbs and Croats. The most famous of them was certainly Milan Levar, who testified to the Hague investigators about horrors that had happened in Gospic and its surroundings. His statement drew the Tribunals' attention to the Croatian General Mirko Norac, under whose command were also operations in Gospic and Medak.

Milan Levar was killed late this summer in Gospic by still officially unknown avengers. Several days later, Oreskovic and the others were brought in. Although he testified before the Rijeka Court about the events in Lika, no one has yet officially charged Mirko Norac. However, in a spectacular operation in which suspects of war crimes were arrested near Zadar, also were arrested some individuals whose names were mentioned in connection with the pogrom of Bosniacs in the Bosnian village of Ahmici or with the harbouring of perpetrators.

This operation aroused strong opposition of the parties of the Right in Croatia, general mobilisation of all sorts of "crisis headquarters" and pro-Ustasha tumult which subdued in the later months. It is very likely that this trend will be repeated with the latest findings of the investigators from Rijeka. For, the exhumation in Debelo Brdo is not just any case, but has the meaning of a true historic precedent.

Namely, this was the first time that the Croatian investigators have actually discovered a mass grave of Serbian civilians who had been undoubtedly killed by regular Croatian soldiers. This is a police and court process which will be conducted by the bodies of the Croatian state and not exclusively by international judicial experts. In several previous cases bodies of killed Serbian civilians had been also discovered at other locations in Croatia, but this example exceeds by far all parameters in terms of quantity and nature.

Of particular importance in this whole story is the fact that from the very beginning the defence of persons suspected of having committed crimes in Gospic was based on a vulgar, but also inconveniently practical assumption: without bodies there is no crime. It was common knowledge that the crime had been committed, but concrete bodies have been discovered only now so that it will be interesting to see how will the accused criminals defend themselves in the further course of the trial.

The move of the official court defence which ensued the moment first sacks with the remains of victims from Lika were brought to light, hinted what might be the future course of the proceedings. The defence counsels of Oreskovic and his comrades called into question the expertise from 1991 and the professional credentials of the Belgrade doctor who was then working for the Yugoslav People's Army, since Deputy District Attorney Doris Hrast had previously made it known that there was sufficient reason and ground for taking the disputable findings into consideration. This statement was issued with an understandable measure of caution and reservation, so that accompanied by the existing corroborating statements of eye-witnesses, the insistence of the defence counsels will become pointless once identification with the reliable DNA method of analysis is done. Then there will be no room for an effective defence of Tomislav Oreskovic and his foursome, because the existing indications will definitely become irrefutable evidence.

At this moment, the main argument of the defence relating to the exhumation is also rather shaky and reads: "If there was liquidation, the existing indications show that it could have been done only on Lipova Glavica, while these bodies were discovered some 40 kms further". It is interesting that already in February 1992 the English daily "The Guardian" wrote about those same bodies (the Rijeka daily "The New Paper" carried parts of the text), with an appendix on the participation of international institutions in the controversial autopsy in the town of Udbina in Lika. This corroborates the credibility of information that the bodies had been transferred from the scene of the crime and buried at another, more distant location. It is equally logical that the Army, which discovered bodies of its compatriots, buried them at the closest existing civilian cemetery and not there on the spot or just left them like that.

Another important thing relating to the investigators' discovery is that after exhumation and under the assumption that the indentification will confirm all the allegations of witnesses for the prosecution, the Croatian judiciary can no longer withdraw this case. As long as bodies remained undiscovered that possibility existed, and those who wanted the Croatian state to resolve the crimes of its official representatives on its own, had every reason to worry. In the ideological as well as professional terms, the Croatian judiciary is a heterogeneous organism whose functioning is frequently unsynchronised, which contributes to its poor results. In addition, in these hard times of the civilisational transition, it is opportune to avoid calling to account those responsible and to pretend that there were no criminals as long as no one can prove their crimes. But - if nothing else - long ago, molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick made it certain that we can finally believe in a more just legal outcome.

Igor Lasic

(AIM)