AFTER THE VERDICT TO BROTHERS LAUSEVIC

It is a fact that Zarko Lausevic killed two men, but it is difficult not to speak of him as of a victim too - and not of someone else's wantonness or his own fame, but of the environment he lived in. Lausevic simply could not take such a dose of nationalistic hysteria and chauvinism he had experienced himself, and in the end it broke him down. He tried to fight against it by peaceful means - by protests, boycott, by abstention from acting, but altogether it did not offer him the necessary dose of security. He bought a gun and used it very soon after that - the lives of two young men are lost and he was sentenced to 15 years of emprisonment.

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In the last day of October, the Criminal Tribunal of the HigherCcourt in Podgorica completed the fifteen-month trial to the well-known actor Zarko Lausevic and his brother Branimir. Zarko was senteneced to fifteen years of imprisonment for having killed Dragor Pejovic and Radovan Vucinic, and wounded Andrija Kazic, while Branimir will have to spend two years in prison for having fired a shot which hit the wall of the cafe bar "Apple" in Podgorica that night between July 30 and 31, 1993. The Tribunal did not accept the thesis of the defense that the Lausevic brothers acted in necessary self-defence because "it did not correspond to the attack". "They were in danger, but their lives were not", the Tribunal concluded.

Life "writes novels" and directs films", but sometimes, just the opposite seems to happen - that a film predicts, almost down to details, a life story. All similarities between the hero of the film "Better than Escape", the last-year's laureate of all Yugoslav film festivals, and real persons and events, unfortunately, this time is not accidental, but cruelly real. Namely, in the last Serbo-Croat film (Belgrade actors, Croatian money), "Better than Escape" Zarko Lausevic acta a famous actor who, due to circumstances and a traffic accident in which he killed a man, ends up in prison. The three-year old Zarkov's son, Dusan, also appears in the film in the role of the son of the main actor, who leaves to America with his mother in the end, leaving his misunderstood father. Three years after this film was made, and almost simultaneously with the beginning of its presentation in Belgrade cinemas, this film scenario is played on the stage of life. In a '93 summer night, after the successful first night of his play called "Kanjos Macedonovic" in Budva "City Theatre", Zarko comes back to Podgorica, to see his closest relatives. He goes out right away with his borther Branimir to a near-by cafe, where a commonplace situation develops into a real drama. To a remark of the known actor addressed to the waitress "why is it so noisy here", the hurt vanity of the young, nineteen-year-old Pejovic reacted with "what is it to you". The waitress declared at court later that nothing predicted a conflict, that she had just entered the cafe from the garden when the shots were heard. Altogether 13 shots were fired with a tragic epilogue - two dead persons and one seriously wounded. What was happenening after the quoted first exchange of words between the younger Lausevic brother and Pejovic, the Court did not manage to find out even after fifteen months of investigation. Having realized that things are becoming serious, had the Lausevic brothers turned their backs to the belligerent boys and then were severely attacked and thrown down, or had Zarko, drunk as he was and standing up, immediately started to shoot at the unfortunate young men, the Court did not manage to establish, at least not with too great a certainty. In the end, the Court had to reach a decision. It adopted the second version which seemed to have resulted from the findings of the Belgrade Medical School Board and was contrary to the findings of Podgorica physicians and the physicians of the Belgrade Penal Rehabilitation Institution about defense "out of extreme necessity" and the unstable psychic state caused by concussion.

At the end of the trial it turned out that numerous omissions in the investigation immediately after the event (fingreprints from Zarko's bag where he carried his gun were not taken, nor the prints from the wall where the shots ended up) caused a pretty confused and contradictory course of the trial. Whether due to the popularity of Zarko Lausevic which exposed the Court to pressures of the public, primarily the sensational press, or on the other hand, due to the threats and the pressure exerted by the relatives of the deceased who sought "head for head", the Tribunal wandered between the two extremes, creating the impression that it was either the matter of "necessary defence" that Toma Fila, the defense counsel, insisted upon, or that it was a premeditated murder, since "Zarko is not a victim, but the one who dominated the situation", as the Public Attorney, Zoran Radonjic. emphasized. The other controversial fact was the introduction of the findings of the Belgrade Medical School Board. Namely, all previous expert analysis supported the allegation of Zarko Lausevic that he had shot in self-defense from the floor after he had been thrown down and faced with the scene of his motionless brother who lay vis-a-vis covered with blood. Eminent Podgorica physicians defended their findings at court: that Lausevic brothers, who were examined after the conflict, suffered concussions and that their lives were in danger, in view of the other injuries. At the beginning of the year, after an examination in the Belgrade Penal Rehabilitation Institution, the team of physicians verified the findings of Podgorica physicians. And then the mentioned Board entered the scene. The Tribunal, as stressed later, due to a lack of trust in the previous expert findings, demanded a new expert opinion from the Medical School Board which reached completely contrary conclusions: that Lausevic brothers did not suffer concussions, "because if they had, they would have been able neither to attack, nor to defend themselves", and that their lives were not in danger "since all Pejovic had in his hand was a hamburger". Later, at Court, Lausevic responded: "About the expert aspect, that is, whether I suffered a concussion or not, I cannot speak and I think that, after all, that is not essential, because a man need not suffer from a concussion to defend himself. I cannot speak about the degree of irritability mentioned in the findings either, but I would like to have the members of the Board tell me whether the degree of beating which determines the degree of irritability has ever been calculated in the references. If you are hit, beaten, if your bag where you keep your gun is being torn away from you, and if you are watching your brother killed - according to the assessment of these physicians, it is just a state of raised emotional excitement. Neither I nor my brother have a criminal record to make someone afraid of us and to enable interpretation of my words 'nothing, nothing, everything is O.K.' with a light touch on Pejovic's shoulder as an inclination towards excessive behavior as the Board interpreted it..."

The Court chronicler recorded in his newspaper that "the statements and the feeling of the accused, the statements of the eye-witnesses, the findings of the ballistic expert, and the physicians who were the first in contact with the defendants, coincided", but this was not enough for the Tribunal to make them decisive in reaching the verdict. The Court chose the wounded Andrija Kazic to be the main witness, taking his testimony that Pejovic, who was already hit by a bullet, called out to him "take his gun, he'll shoot us all", as evidence that Zarko Lausevic was aware of what he was doing and that he had done it "in a fist fight when a panic-stricken struggle for life occurs". The Court did not accept the explanation of the defense, that it "was not a fist-fight", but a "perfidious attack and blows which caused the defendants to be thrown to different sides of the cafe garden". According to the assessment of Mr. Fila, court proceedings were violated in several instances and he will appeal to the Supreme Court which will either verify, change, or return it to the beginning. The main remark of Mr. Fila was that the Court should have chosen to coordinate, and not to adopt one out of several medical opinions, and also that certain legal and ethical facts make the work of The Medical Scjhool Board doubtful. Some members of this Board retired last year, some even before, and only in the past year and a half there were two complaints against that same Board filed with the Ethical Committee of the Serbian Medical Societry (the case of Vuk Draskovic and the death of a boy from Bijelo Polje).

Branimir Lausevic had no alcohol in his blood, and Zarko had 0.7 pro mille three hours after the event, meaning that there was about 1 pro mille at the moment it took place, while the murdered Pejovic and Vucinic had much more - the first 2.2 and the latter 1.7 pro mille of alcohol in the blood. The Lausevic brothers had no criminal records, one was an actor and the other a technician employed in a state agency, while the murdered boys often in their short lives crossed the line which is not forbidden only by common decency, but by Law too. In the final speech, the defense assessed that the decisive motive in this tragic event was Pejovic's hurt vanity, and it stated the same problem - vanity

• as the reason for contfrontation of medical opinions. Human weaknesses have certainly contributed to this, but the major guilty party can be none of the participants or accomplices in this case, but it should be sought somewhere else - in the society and the newly-proclaimed system of values. The tragically killed Pejovic and Vucinic are in fact a terrible metaphor of forlornness of a young generation which was not given a chance to prove their value, while the example of the successful Zarko Lausevic only proves that the forlornness is definitely the general state of mind in this space. Stuffing of the citizens with enormous quantities of hatred, war hysteria, chauvinism, led them to a state of chronic frustration and even great or minor disorders. Some people succeed to get themselves out of it all, the majority remains permanently "imprisoned" however. When Serbian nationalistic frenzy was in full swing, Zarko Lausevic's theatre performance "St. Sava" in Yugoslav Drama Theatre was brutally interrupted. He decided then not to act any more "until this frenzy lasts". He was not praised for it. On the contrary. Then he started to act again, but he was feverish all the time. He complained to his friends that he constantly feared another interruption, the same curses and howling. Finally, it broke him down. He tried to defend hmself by all means, but in vain. In the end he chose a gun, although even this did not give him the needed security. He simply had to "burst" somewhere - and that it happened that night in Podgorica is just mere chance, and it would have been an insignificant detail, if it were not for the fact that two young men were killed.

Zeljko Ivanovic AIM Podgorica