JUST A SMALL MURDER

AIM, ZAGREB, June 13, 1997

Antun Gudelj, the murderer of Josip Reihl-Kir, Chief of the Osijek Police Department, is a true media star these days. Ever since he was released from the District Prison in Osijek where he was detained on June 3, by a decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia of May 22, this year, he finds it hard to answer numerous requests for interviews. The national weekly "Globus" (Globe) dedicated to him over four pages of its last issue offering the triple-murderer a chance to explain how and why on July 1, of now distant 1991, by madly shooting from a Kalashnikov on the road leading from Osijek to Tenje, in addition to the chief of the Osijek police Reihl-Kir, he also killed Goran Zobundzija, the then Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Assembly of the Commune of Osijek, and Milan Knezevic, a deputy of that same commune. Mirko Tubic, Vice-President of the Local Community of Tenje, the fourth passenger in that car, was the only one to survive the barrage fire which, according to some, marked the true beginning of the war in Eastern Slavonia.

Invoking the Law on General Pardon, which Croatia adopted under the pressure of the international community in order to pardon the Serbs who took part in the armed rebellion and spare them juridical persecution after the completion of peaceful reintegration, the Supreme Court of Croatia set Gudelj free without a hitch. For triple murder and an attempted murder Gudelj served something over a year in the investigative prison, although at his first hearing (on June 27, 1994) he was sentenced in absentia to the most severe punishment - 20 years in prison.

Although the HDZ authorities appointed him Chief of the Osijek Police Department, Josip Reihl-Kir was not much liked by the ruling party. The most influential man of the Osijek HDZ, Branimir Glavas nursed a grudge against him because Kir brought criminal charges against him for disarming two patrolmen while on a night patrol and, thus unarmed, took them to the Osijek Police Station (MUP). Kir thought that the police came before the party, be it the ruling one, and behaved accordingly. He tried to put an end to the already blazing revolt of a part of the Serbs in the villages around Osijek by means of negotiations and not by force, an on such a mission - on July 1, 1991 - lost his life.

Although the story about Josip Reihl-Kir's murder is well-known, some details are still worth repeating. On that fatal first day of July, together with a delegation of the Osijek Executive Council, Kir went to Tenje, a village near Osijek, in order to negotiate the "normalisation of relations" (as today's terminology would call it) with the local Serbs. The agreement on the removal of barricades and re-establishment of local intertown traffic, was allegedly in sight, when a messenger came from Osijek with news that Osijek policemen were about to mount an attack on the village. Kir hurriedly jumped into Mirko Knezevic's white "Stojadin" and together with Tubic and Zobundzija started towards Osijek to see what was going on. On their way to Osijek, near Novo Tenje, they were stopped by a police patrol in which Gudelj was on duty as a reserve policeman. According to the testimony of Mirko Tubic, the only one from that car who survived the attack, the meeting was quite unusual. A number of policemen coarsely affronted Kir for driving with the Chetniks. As Tubic later said, and now free triple murderer confirmed at his trial, Gudelj inquired about his mother and father, as he had heard rumours that morning that his father had been hanged on the church-tower and mother had been raped in the old part of Tenje. As it turned out later on, none of this was true.

When they finally managed to pass through the Croatian MUP control point and drove on towards the nearby Osijek, they soon found out that information on the MUP attack was untrue. Knezevic turned his car and together with Kir, Zobundzija and Tubic started towards Tenje were negotiations were to be continued. "On our way back, at the Croatian MUP control point we saw Gudelj standing by the road. He held a machine gun by a strap, just like "Krauts" used to do. Someone in the car said: "This one is going to shoot!" I still do not know who said that: Milan, Goran or Kir. Then we heard a barrage-fire. I threw myself behind Kir's seat and after a couple of seconds, when the firing stopped, I raised my head. At the same place where he sat just some minutes earlier Zobundzija was lying, blood still gushing from his body. I turned my eyes to the front - Milan lay curled in Kir's lap. And Kir was leaning on Milan's shoulder. They were both soaked with blood. You know how it looks like when the heart is still beating. It all happened in a second." - were the words with which Mirko Tubic, who now lives in Tenje and has to go twice a week for chemodialysis to Novi Sad because of the consequences of this attack on his life, described his memory of the last minutes of Kir, Zobundzija and Knezevic.

And this is how Gudelj described that moment in his interview to Zagreb "Globus": "The evening before, on June 30, my brother, son and I were in Tenje. In the town centre we saw a sniper on a roof. After we visited my parents who live in the house next to mine, we did not go back the same way, but went around. However, along the way we came upon a barricade. At that moment I put a cartridge into the chamber in case we had to defend ourselves. Luckily, there was no one there, so we went around that barricade and got to our control point, on the road to Osijek. That is why I had a round in my gun when "Stojadin" with late Kir and others, came from the direction of Osijek. Since I was on duty there, I went out to stop it. The investigation revealed that the car was in third gear. In other words, it did not stop. I stepped aside so that they would not run me down, and as I jumped my finger accidentally pulled the trigger and, the rest you know".

After committing a triple murder, although many Croatian policemen were on the spot, Gudelj calmly left the scene of the crime. The killing happened at noon, and according to Gudelj's statement at the trial which followed his arrest at the Frankfurt Airport in spring 1996, he spent the following night in the nearby cornfields. This is how he explained what happened afterwards: "Somewhere around six o'clock I came to that same point. One of the policeman called out to the other two: 'Do not shoot, it is Gudelj!' I approached them and asked for a glass of water. They took me into a house and gave me water. After that they let me phone my brother Zivko from another house. He came for me with his car and took me to Osijek. Nobody stopped us at the police point near the Agricultural Faculty." At a new trial held at the District Court of Osijek after Gudelj was handed over to the Croatian authorities, the judge Ruzica Samota did not show particular interest in the fact that this detail, as well as other parts of Gudelj's story smelled of the possibility that after the murder someone was at all times "covering" for Gudelj.

Although the whole of Croatia (at that time still a part of Yugoslavia) knew that he had killed the chief of an important police department, Gudelj spent several days in Osijek after which his cousin took him to Zadar by car. From Zadar he crossed the Yugoslav-Austrian border, again without any problems, and engaged in "moonlighting" in Austria in order to save enough money for a plane ticket to Australia. Before coming to Tenje, Gudelj had lived in Australia for twenty years so that he had the Australian passport. In Tenje, with the capital he had earned while working in Australia, he opened a car-painting shop and in early 90's became so interested in politics that he was appointed President of the local branch of HDZ in Tenje.

For almost whole four years Gudelj lived in Australia peacefully and without any problems, although because of the public pressure Croatia had in the meantime issued a warrant for his arrest through Interpol. However, Gudelj was obviously in no danger of being arrested and it seemed that all that happened on July 1, 1991 on the Osijek-Tenje road would soon be enveloped by a thick veil of oblivion. In late 1995 and early 1996 a spectacular BBC TV series entitled "The Death of Yugoslavia" was shown all around the world. The third sequel of that brilliant documentary programme spoke about the murder of Josip Reihl-Kir and the authors Laura Silber and Alain Little dedicated much attention to that event treating it as a key point for the beginning of the war in Eastern Slavonia. Reihl-Kir's wife, Jadranka told the BBC crew that her husband often complained that he feared for his own safety because his wish to negotiate with the Serbs did not enjoy the support of the radical structures within the ruling HDZ. On that occasion Kir's wife mentioned an interesting detail which added a special gust to this complicated story.

Somewhere in March 1991, (i.e. before the massacre of the Croatian policemen in Borovo Selo) Gojko Susak and Vice Vukojevic arrived to Osijek from Zagreb - said Reihl-Kir's widow. They wanted to see the Serbian barricades, at that time already erected at the entrance of Borovo Selo and asked the Chief of Osijek Police Department, Kir, to drive them to that place. Branimir Glavas joined them, but when they came near the obstacle placed on the road (a tractor with a disc-plough) they saw that it was deserted, since the guards, the local Serbs, went to take a nap. Reihl-Kir could not get his breath back when he saw the mentioned threesome getting rocket launchers from the car trunk and firing three missiles. One blew up the disc-plough, the other landed in the cornfield, while the third damaged a house on the outskirts of the village. After this action, the three men quickly returned to Osijek and one of the protagonists lost his gun on the way which later Blagoje Adzic, the YPA General used as an evidence.

In that same BBC series the story was confirmed by Josip Boljkovac, who said that Kir complained to him too how he feared for his life so that a decision was already brought in Zagreb to transfer him to the MUP Headquarters in order to pull him out of the boiling Osijek environment. And precisely on that July 1, the day of the murder, he was supposed to assume his new duty in Zagreb, but he wished to stay in Osijek several days longer and bring to a conclusion

• a successful one he hoped - the negotiations initiated with the revolting Serbs. In the series "The Death of Yugoslavia" Boljkovac also mentioned the same names which Kir's wife gave, as those who threatened Kir. After the series "The Death of Yugoslavia" was shown, Branimir Glavas announced that he would sue Boljkovac, but although this was over a year ago, Boljkovac never received court summons. The fact that a day after Josip Reihl-Kir's murder, Josip Boljkovac, the then Minister of the Interior, was relieved of duty, is not without relevance for this whole story.

As soon as he learned of Kir's death, Boljkovac announced a thorough and urgent investigation, but his successor obviously gave the whole case a more flexible interpretation. When the mentioned series was shown in Australia, that vast and distant country suddenly became too small for Gudelj. Some Australian, and especially British journalists, showed an intensive interest in his whereabouts. Quite suddenly, in spring 1996, Gudelj showed up at the Frankfurt Airport, where the German Police arrested him on the basis of Interpol's warrant and handed him over to Croatia.

Now that Gudelj has been acquitted after a new trial, on the basis of the Law on General Pardon, the thesis which could be heard in Osijek and Croatia at the time of his arrest in Germany, sounds even more plausible: Gudelj allegedly received a message from high places to return to Croatia where he would have a fair and honest trial. Namely, it was possible that some of the journalist who have shown great interest in his case, could discover him, after which the Australian police would arrest him and - since he had the Australian passport - try him there. It is hard to guess what would Gudelj - far away from his home country - have said at that trial, but it turned out that his decision to return to Croatia proved a "sure win" for him.

The well-known Zagreb attorney-at-law, Slobodan Budak, who represented the wife of Josip Reihl-Kir in court, called the court ruling on setting Gudelj free "scandalous" stating that the decision to apply the Law on Amnesty on Gudelj was totally ungrounded. "Did not President Tudjman say in Vukovar that everyone can be forgiven, except for those whose hands were stained with blood", stated Budak for the Osijek paper "Bumerang". "It doesn't matter whose hands we are talking about - which was not the case with the Supreme Court. They are stained and the person in question has to answer for his actions. Be it a Croat, a Serb or a Bosniac, be it a person on the side of the attacker or on the side of the attacked. That should not be of any relevance".

Budak appealed against the acquitting of Gudelj to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia, and Kir's widow, Jadranka, submitted a proposal to the International Tribunal for War Crimes in the Hague to investigate the Gudelj case, hoping to get justice abroad when she was unable to do that in her country.

According to some indiscretions from the judicial circles, even the former Supreme Court President, Dr.Krunislav Olujic, who fell from HDZ's and President Tudjman's personal grace and had been therefore recently removed, was asked to agree for the Law on General Pardon to be applied to Gudelj. He refused. Josip Vukovic, a man who made history with his statement that Croats could not be held responsible for any war crimes because they fought a defensive war, succeeded his post of the President of the Supreme Court. Has Gudelj's acquittal anything to do with the fact that he is a Croat by nationality?

DRAGO HEDL AIM