Coming Face to Face with Crime

Spitting over the Graves

Simultaneously with accelerated publication of information on the existence of at least five mass graves where bodies were buried in order to conceal crimes committed in Kosovo and Metohija, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia is for some reason intensifying the attack against the heads of the Army of Yugoslavia

AIM Belgrade, June 16, 2001

Last week the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia confirmed the discovery of Belgrade Vreme weekly that the bodies of the victims of crimes committed in Kosovo and Metohija were buried on the territory of “May 13” complex, one of the police training centres of special anti-terrorist units (SAJ). It was stated that the refrigerator truck sunk in the Danube on March 20/21 1999, which came to the surface near Tekija two weeks later, contained 86 human bodies which were then transported in two trucks - it was not said whose - to Belgrade and buried by the road between Zemun and Batajnica. A video recording made between May 31 and June 6 this year was presented to the journalists: on it they could see a bulldozer, a piece of ground cleared of bushes and a few bones that looked like human ribs, a part of a skull and lower jaw sticking out from the ground.

After the arrival of the observers of the Hague Tribunal - for the moment there is one Swiss and one Irishman, but the arrival of experts from Scotland has also been announced - and the International Commission for Missing Persons represented by a Canadian, the expert team from Belgrade Institute of Forensic Medicine tried to continue exhumation on Monday, June 11. Due to heavy rain and mud clay had turned into, by Saturday, June 16, they managed only to remove a layer of land of 120 cm underneath which they determined the dimensions of a grave of about 10 by 10 metres.

In the meantime, at frequent press conferences, Serbian minister of police Dusan Mihajlovic mentioned the existence of "several mass graves" on the same territory, as well as that some bodies were buried "partly under the highway" in organised attempts to remove the traces of crime". The Minister who did not comment on the guesses that there could have been several hundred victims; on the occasion he assessed that the public should not be interested where the police got information - "because there are many unwilling participants of the event, who received salaries for this", but rather who ordered this to be done, organised and proclaimed it a state secret. The problem is, however, that pointing out to Slobodan Milosevic as the one who had given the order has not been publicly corroborated by any evidence; on the other hand, the public seems to be interested more in direct organisers and perpetrators of criminal acts of concealing crimes, especially in view of the fact that the terrible secret that must have been known to at least several ten people was so successfully kept for two years.

According to the published data, there is no doubt any more about the fact that the operation called "Dubina 2" (Depth 2) on the removal of the refrigerator truck and the bodies from it was carried out by the police. On Friday, June 15, the "discovery" was made public of a mass grave near Petrovo Selo, the same centre for training special units of MUP of Serbia near Tekija where the refrigerator truck from the Danube was destroyed. Once again, before experts of forensic medicine even arrived on the spot, it was publicly assumed that there were about thirty bodies, as well as that they were not the ones from the "case of the refrigerator truck". The MUP of Serbia obviously knows much more than it makes public. This might be considered as normal routine in normal circumstances. In this - and all the other similar cases the existence of which was announced in the form of "reliable operational knowledge" - there is no excuse for hesitation, selection and dosing of information, least of all for passing over in silence the unquestionable known "banal" facts on the ownership of the trucks that transported the bodies, of the bulldozer that buried them, or the status of the men who, willingly or unwillingly, participated in removing the traces of crime.

The fact that the context of the "discovery" of mass graves served for public attacks against the Army of Yugoslavia (VJ) just added to the suspicion about the existence of certain concealed reasons for such action of the current heads of the MUP of Serbia. In the past three weeks Minister Dusan Mihajlovic never missed an opportunity to single out VJ and the head of the General Staff Nebojsa Packovic in connection with the "discovery" of mass graves. At first it was a suggestion to the journalists to "see who participated in armed conflicts in Kosovo", then he stated that during bombing by NATO the police was subordinated to the Army, and finally that the order for rehabilitation of the battleground was given by the Army. For some reason, on Wednesday, June 13, at a press conference, Mihajlovic showed to the journalists the 700 gram gold and diamond medal general Nebojsa Pavkovic had intended to decorate Slobodan Milosevic with; besides, copies of certain orders for rehabilitation of the battlefields issued by the commander of the Third Army (Nebojsa Pavkovic) and the Pristina Corps (Vladimir Lazarevic) at the time of NATO bombing were handed out.

What does one of these orders say? On the last day in April 1999, major general Vladimir Lazarevic, commander of the Pristina Corps, ordered rehabilitation of the ground after anti-terrorist combat action and investigation in cases when there is founded suspicion or indication that a criminal act had been committed. The investigation would be carried out by military judiciary if the units of VJ were engaged in the combats, and by civilian judiciary if the units outside VJ were engaged. On one of the published facsimiles a hand-written note is visible: "SUP

• to everybody - to the head. Pursuant item 5 act with approval of the Headquarters". Item 5 of Lazarevic's order reads as follows: "Units outside the ranks of VJ as participants in combat, as well as civilian judiciary, after completing investigation, submit the minutes on inspection within the shortest possible time to the Military Court at the Command of the Pristina Corps, with very strict protection of data".

Since the only headquarters that operated in Kosovo and Metohija were the Headquarters of MUP of Serbia – and the mentioned order was sent to all the listed units of VJ, while the only police force mentioned is the “Headquarters of MUP for KiM” – it seems that someone in it (the signature is illegible) with the note about the “Headquarters” as the arbiter in implementation of Item 5, decided what and how would be sent to the military court at the Command of the Pristina Corps. This detail corroborates allegations from the General Staff of VJ occasioned by accusations from Mihajlovic's press conferences; the Army claims that subordination of police forces to the joint command was just formal. The agonising history of former Yugoslav wars in the past decade confirms separate but not essentially different roles played in them by “Milosevic's” police and “Milosevic's” army.

In public communication – or perhaps, in this war of statements – MUP of Serbia has, maybe accidentally, disregarded something. The term “rehabilitation” and “rehabilitation of battlegrounds” was used to imply removal of traces of crime: that is how the order on rehabilitation of battlegrounds was put in the context of proving the connection between the army and mass graves which MUP of Serbia is “discovering” right now. The rehabilitation of ground – organized searching for the wounded, identification of the persons killed and removal of bodies, biological waste and everything else that could cause contagious diseases on the territory where combats took place – is the obligation of warring parties according to the Geneva Conventions ever since 1864. That is why publication of the order on rehabilitation, along with the command to investigate all cases of suspicion about the cause of death, just speak in favour of the army – except unless the MUP of Serbia knows much more about whether and how the order was carried out. For the time being, unlike the police, VJ published indictments against 193 of its members for criminal acts committed during NATO bombing.

On Thursday, June 14, head of the General Staff of VJ, Nebojsa Pavkovic, declares concerning the press conference held the previous day by the Minister of police Dusan Mihajlovic that “there is the intention to and the danger that two exceptionally significant defensive and security systems – the MUP of Serbia and VJ – will mutually wear each other out in daily confrontations in the media”. According to Pavkovic, VJ was at first attacked as patron of paramilitary formations, then it was accused of obstruction on the occasion of the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, and finally as an accomplice in the scandal of the “refrigerator truck”. And who commanded whom in Kosovo? “The Law on National Defence prescribes that units of the MUP be under the command of the Army and that units of the MUP be obliged to subordinate themselves to VJ”, says Pavkovic. But, “MUP had its own headquarters and its own heads were in command, and the cooperation with the Army was coordinated through political personages in the joint command which was established for that purpose. Therefore, the commander of the MUP units and members of the joint command which was in charge of them know best the answers to the question what the units of MUP did... I think that Minister Mihajlovic need not be reminded that there is at least several ten thousand witnesses of the events in Kosovo and Metohija as well as all the documents on the acts of MUP and the Army of Yugoslavia”.

The person the Head of the General Staff of VJ has in mind is obviously police general Sreten Lukic, current head of the public security department of the MUP of Serbia: at the critical time he was the head and/or the coordinator of the headquarters of the MUP of Serbia for Kosovo and Metohija. To a directly put question in connection with the “case of the refrigerator truck” he refused to answer; a week later he declared that he had not known for the case. Then Minister Dusan Mihajlovic promoted him in the beginning of June: if this is not in fact a way to remove him even if it were “upward”, for some reason the Minister of police and Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic trust Lukic; but not Pavkovic. If it had not been for the fields where human remains are buried, the horrible evidence not only of crimes but also of the intentional operation aimed at concealing them, the whole story could be just one in an endless series of pictures of political squaring of accounts. One may even say typical: Milosevic's general is attacked by the minister who had for years kept that same Milosevic in power, with anonymous support of Milosevic's “operative forces” and their “discovery” of crimes. At this moment, speaking in police language, there are strong indications that the whole conflict between the police and the army over “rehabilitation of battleground” is in fact directed towards an (un)expected target, President of FRY Vojislav Kostunica. But that is a different story.

Aleksandar Ciric

(AIM)