FROM THE FARM, OVER OVCARA, TO THE HAGUE

Dokmanovic's Arrest

AIM Zagreb, 30 June, 1997

Slavko Dokmanovic, former chairman of the municipal assembly of Vukovar, who got to the post after the first multi-party elections in Croatia in spring 1990, was obviously deprived of a quality which enables even the least skilful politician to keep his head above the surface of the often troubled political waters longer. This quality is called timing and its main characteristic is making a certain move at the right time, because premature making of a move usually leads to the destiny of a cock which crows too early in the morning. Last Friday, Slavko Dokmanovic, friend and political supporter of Goran Hadzic, set out on his way from Voivodina (where having bought a house on a farm with 50 odd hectares of land around, he moved when he realized that the radical greater-Serbian policy of the local Serbs which he belonged to with all his heart had definitely been defeated in the conflict with the cooperativeness of Stanimirovic or Vojnovic), in order to try to resolve his status with the investigator of the Hague Tribunal in Vukovar.

Dokmanovic was on the list of 150 persons who the Croatian authorities were not ready to grant amnesty to pursuant the Law which enabled that all - except as stressed, those who had blood on their hands - be forgiven for participation in the armed rebellion. According to insufficiently clear information, immediately after crossing the Erdut bridge on the Danube (which connects eastern Slavonia with Voivodina), Dokmanovic was caught by investigators of the Hague international tribunal for war crimes committed on the territory of former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and with the assistance of the military units of the UNTAES, he was immediately transported to the Hague.

Probably not even Dokmanovic himself had known that the international tribunal had on 26 March this year, in the amended and supplemented "Vukovar indictment" raised in November 1996 for the bloody events in Ovcara against three officers of the former JNA - Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin - included his name. As noted in the comparatively scanty statement issued by the press service of the ICTY on the day Dokmanovic was arrested and taken to the Hague, in November 1991, at the time of the fall of Vukovar, he had been the chairman of the municipal assembly of the city, when, having entered the Vukovar hospital, the JNA, along with members of the paramilitary Serbian groups, had taken over 260, mostly wounded men away from the hospital. As said in the short statement of the ICTY, having been the mayor of Vukovar, Dokmanovic shared the responsibility for the event which took place after the 260 wounded men had been taken away from the hospital, who were transported in large groups to the nearby agricultural complex Ovcara and liquidated.

Some Croatian witnesses who survived the drama in Ovcara stated in their testimonies the fact that Dokmanovic himself had participated in torturing Croatian defenders of Vukovar who had been lying wounded in the hospital. According to certain allegations, Dokmanovic beat three persons to death in Ovcara. These witnesses also claim that he personally ordered their torture and execution. These are the details that investigators and judges in the Hague court will be dealing with.

An interesting detail in the story is that the Egyptian judge Fouad Rijad, who is in charge of the proceedings connected with Ovcara, failed to order public extension of the indictment against Mrksic, Radic amd Sljivancanin, so as to include the name of Slavko Dokmanovic. On the contrary, he ordered that it be "sealed" and held secret in order to make the arrest of Dokmanovic easier. It is true, though, that at the press conferences in Vukovar UNTAES headquarters, during the excavation of the mass grave in Ovcara, it was mentioned a few times that the possibility of extending the indictment existed, which had until then, for this mass crime, included only three names - Mrksic, Radic and Sljivancanin. If Dokmanovic had known that the indictment had been broadened in the meantime, and that it included his name, he probably would not have so readily set out from the pleasant shade of his Voivodina farm on his way to Vukovar, had he been aware of the threats that this small outing could take him much further away than he could have dreamt of.

Petar Djukic, head of the Transitional Police Forces (TPF) declared after Dokmanovic's arrest that on the territory of UNTAES, there were obviously two parallel police structures, since his policemen had not participated in the arrest and transportation of Dokmanovic to the Hague. Almost complete silence about the manner in which it was all done (the otherwise talkative Prilip Arnold, spokesman of UNTAES, was not willing to give any details about the action to the journalists, but told them to be patient until Monday, when the head prosecutor Louiose Arbour would satisfy their curiosity at a press conference in the Hague), was after all interrupted on Saturday afternoon with a very short statement of UNTAES in which it was said that Dokmanovic was arrested "on UNTAES territory on 27 June, 1997 by ICTY investigators". In the quoted statement No. 66 issued by the Civil Affairs Department, it is also said that "Security Council Resolution No. 1037 stresses that UNTAES shall cooperate with the Tribunal, and in this case that is how it acted. Such cooperation is compulsory only in cases of persons accused by the Hague international court and it has nothing to do with accusations or demands against an individual by a government of a state".

This last statement was written with the aim to set at ease the remaining 149 persons who are also on the list of those who have not been granted amnesty, and against whom, at least as far as it is known, the Hague tribunal has not raised charges. The news about Dokmanovic's arrest and his transportation to the Hague, which spread as lightning all around UNTAES territory, caused utter consternation among persons who are on the list of the 150. Each and every one of them thought he could be the next. On Saturday morning when the news that Dokmanovic had been taken into custody in the Hague became the central topic on the whole UNTAES territory, Vojislav Stanimirovic and Milos Vojnovic, the former as the president of the Independent Democratic Serb Party, and the latter as the president of the Joint Council of Municipalities, signed a joint statement expressing "general consternation and concern both of the leadership and the citizens who live on the UNTAES territory". It is claimed in the statement that as of 17 May 1991, Dokmanovic was not at the post of the chairman of the municipal assembly of Vukovar, because on that day, the Croatian government appointed its commissioner in his place. It is also said that at the time of the siege of Vukovar, Dokmanovic was in charge of agriculture in the then regional government seated in Erdut. "This means that he could not have been physically present in Vukovar, or that he could have had anything to do with the military units", it is said in the statement signed by Vojnovic and Stanimirovic.

Dokmanovic came to the post of the chairman of the municipal assembly of Vukovar after the first multi-party elections in Croatia, but soon joined the faction of the local Serbs who joined the SDS and whole-heartedly began to advocate the idea of greater Serbia. Although the Saturday statement of the Independent Democratic Serb Party and the Joint Council of Municipalities was an attempt to free Dokmanovic of responsibility for possible war crimes because on 17 May 1991, the Croatian government discharged him and appointed Marin Vidic Bili commissioner for the municipality of Vukovar, Dokmanovic's role in war developments which followed was not at all insignificant. As Stanimirovic and Vojinovic tried to explain, he formally did head the department of agriculture of the regional government seated in Erdut after that. But, according to testimonies of a few Croats, at the time of the most violent military operations, he in fact commanded the attacks against Vukovar from Trpinje.

Born in Trpinje in 1949, Dokmanovic is a distant relation of Goran Hadzic, who did him an ill turn - as the investigation will probably show - by denying in an interview to the Belgrade magazine Intervju, that Dokmanovic was only in charge of agriculture as of May 1991. "More than 90 per cent of deputies of the Vukovar assembly voted for the recent removal of Dokmanovic from the office of the mayor of Vukovar", said Hadzic in May last year, explaining this by Dokmanovic's passiviness and failure to convene the session of the city government. Dokmanovic was active in negotiations which ended in signing of the Erdut agreement, where as the president of the council of the region of Srem and Baranja, together with Hadzic, he advocated firm and irreconcilable stances about the process of peaceful reintegration. Later, as Belgrade newspapers wrote - when a moderate faction prevailed in the leadership of local Serbs - he moved to Voivodina where he allegedly bought a farm and lived there until he was arrested last Friday.

Let us go back to the main drawback of Slavko Dokmanovic from the beginning of this story, concerning the lack of the feeling for timing. Dokmanovic should have known that UNTAES, but also the Security Council and even the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in their bargaining with Croatia about prolongation of the mandate of the UNTAES would have to make a move which would brighten up the frowning Croatian diplomats on East River. The arrest of Dokmanovic was this "sign of good will" and proof to Croatia that UNTAES could be more than efficacious in issuing airplane tickets to the Hague, if it happened to meet anyone else accused of war crimes on the territory it controls.

But, Dokmanovic's trial will be interesting not only because it will shed light on the case of Ovcara, the deepest and greatest Croatian wound inflicted during the Homeland War, but also because of the connections he maintained with the Serbian secret service, and political and military leadership of Yugoslavia. There is yet another interesting detail linked to Dokmanovic which appeared in Belgrade press immediately after the unclarified murder of Radovan Stojcic Badza, deputy minister of internal affairs of Serbia, that Dokmanovic was the key person who used to send demands for equipment and arms directly to Stojcic's office. The investigation against Dokmanovic which will soon take place int he Hague, will therefore shed light not only on the case of the mass grave in Ovacara, but also on the participation of the Serbian authorities in Vukovar episode of the war against Croatia.

DRAGO HEDL (AIM)