NOISE WITHOUT ECHO

Reactions of Serbia to Arrests in Prijedor

The official Belgrade (SPS) thinks that "the indicted for war crimes are citizens of RS and FR Yugoslavia has nothing to do with it".

AIM Belgrade, 13 July, 1997

The day was stuffy, people nervous: the Assembly of Serbia was electing a new finance minister on 10 July, and its chairman Dragan Tomic was having a hard time deciding what to do with 1200 amendments proposed by the Democratic Party (DS) and about 600 of the Serb Revival Movement (SPO) to the three election laws. About noon, news spread around the parliament that SFOR had arrested the director of the hospital in Prijedor, Dr Milan Mico Kovacevic, and that during the arrest, Simo Drljaca (50), former head of the Prijedor Public Security Centre, colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republica Srpska (RS) and advisor of interior minister Dragan Kijac, was killed. But, that was not all: it was said that CNN had reported about extremely unusual activities of SFOR around Han Pijesak (seat of the former Main Headquarters of general Ratko Mladic. What things are like in Pale and whether something is happening over there, nobody could say for sure.

The first to recover from shock were the Radicals. Head of the group of deputies of the Serb Radical Party (SRS) Tomislav Nikolic, demanded from the Government to react immediately through the assembly "to mass arrests of the Serbs in RS" and added "we will scramble for power later". Slobodan Gavrilovic from DS said "that it was perfectly clear who was to be blamed for the arrests in RS" and started proving that the Democrats were not traitors: "and I ask you how come somebody is a traitor because he eats the (roasted) ox in Pale". The Socialists, just like the Radicals, started playing the chords of Serb unity with the stress on: "we kept telling you, but..." "We kept warning the political leadership to preserve RS and not to allow the people to suffer because of disagreements", said Gorica Gajevic, head of the group of deputies of the SPS. Total confusion threatened until Radmilo Bogdanovic (SPS), a pensioner and grey eminence of high police politics of all Serb lands, finally took things in his hands. He started saying things like: "a man was killed on the territory of RS", then about the investigation, then that "SFOR operations should be put under control if not approved by the authorities and RS". In the end, the case was given to Bogdanovic's Security Commission to deal with it.

That was the official reaction to the SFOR operation in Serbia. The final word was said by the spokesman of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) Ivica Dacic, who established that "the suspects for war crimes are citizens of RS and FR Yugoslavia has nothing to do with it". The only thing he failed to add was the popular slogan among the Socialists: "Serbia has not participated in the war".

However, the political scene in Serbia can be said to be anything but indifferent to the SFOR operation and the investigator from the Hague court. Although "sealed indictments" of the Tribunal are mostly condemned and it is concluded that not a single Serb "who discharged any kind of duty in RS during the war can be at ease" and similar, in the background it is carefully weighed who the arrests performed by SFOR could be useful for: president of RS Biljana Plavsic or leaders in Pale headed by Mimcilo Krajisnik.

The authorities are offering mediation and claim that it is no time for disagreements, but for unity. In this context, it is stated that Biljana Plavsic was manipulated and that, as someone noted, by initiating the struggle for the "ethnically pure legal Serb state", she has caused a profound political and constitutional crisis which the "world power wielders are using to 'immerse' RS into B&H". In other words that, having relied on the West in the inter-Serb political showdown, she has widely opened the doors to the Americans and the Tribunal to remove from political life, in a joint and well-prepared action, all those who are in favour of sovereignty of the state of Bosnian Serbs. Although not yet officially, but rumours are spreading around Belgrade that she has in fact approved the action of SFOR in Prijedor.

Supporters of Dr Biljana Plavsic, or rather, a significant portion of the opposition which she herself had offered personal support during the latest elections and during the post-election crisis, stress that it is just a logical consequence of the Dayton accords. It is well known that in the name of "all the Serbs of the world" it was signed by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and why are now he and his supporters in Belgrade and in Pale playing dumb...

The ones and the others are deeply concerned about the destiny of RS. The political split, not only personal but also regional, with weak Serbia, strengthened "federal partners" in B&H, and decisive role of the international community, everything seems to remind of the destiny of the former so-called Republic of Serb Krajina. Drljaca's death and Kovacevic's arrest, it is clear to everyone, is just the beginning of an operation which certainly leads to Dr Radovan Karadzic and general Mladic. And when these two become available to the Tribunal, nobody can say for sure what will happen to RS - at least in the form in which it exists now. Two things are certain: that the war in which RS was created was senseless and criminal and that many persons in the regime of Serbia whom the arrested may point their fingers at in their testimonies, will not have an easy time.

That is why the public insists on details of the SFOR operation in Prijedor. It is characterized as "perfidious kidnapping at the working place" and "brutal murder". In this context, sovereignty, the letter and the spirit of Dayton, legitimacy of the Tribunal, legal customs and procedure are discussed, war crimes of the others are counted and listed. As if all that can diminish what the Hague Tribunal is charging the late Drljaca and Dr Kovacevic with: as members of the Crisis Staff in 1992 "in cooperation with the others, they planned, stimulated and ordered establishment of camps of Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje and imprisonment of Bosnian Muslims and Croats from municipality of Prijedor in them, under conditions calculated so as to lead to physical destruction of the prisoners and with the intention to destroy a part of the Bosnian Muslims and Croats, as such". The mentioned intention is one of the basic elements for determination of the gravest crime - genocide. Drljaca and Dr Kovacevic are also accused by the Tribunal of commanding responsibility: "They knew or must have known that their subordinate personnel of the camp were killing and inflicting heavy physical and psychological injuries on the prisoners".

Apart from these two, Zeljko Meakic and Dusko Sikirica, commanders of the camps in Omarska and Keraterem are also indicted for genocide. Outside Prijedor, only another three men are indicted for the same crime: Dr Radovan Karadzic, general Ratko Mladic and Goran Jelisic - commander of the camp Luka in Brcko.

In general, an undetermined number of the Muslims and the Croats have passed through camps in the vicinity of Prijedor in which conditions were ghastly: random murders, beating up of the prisoners, various forms of torture, famishing... According to the report of the UN Commission of Experts, in the municipality of Prijedor 52,811 persons were killed or banished.The indictment of the Tribunal states that during a single night in the camp of Omarska, more than 150 men were killed...

For Drljaca in June 1992, the famished Muslims in this camp were thin like skeletons "because they do not eat pork", and Dr Kovacevic described the camps as places where "Muslim and Croat extremists who had participated in armed rebellion were taken into custody". Something similar was claimed by the Ustashas about the Serbs in Jasenovac where, by the way, Dr Kovacevic was born.

Before he was killed, Drljaca had had at least two close encounters with the soldiers of the international forces in B&H. In both cases, apart from cursing, weapons were drawn, but everything ended without serious consequences. That is why Drljaca had to be relieved of the duty of the chief of police in Prijedor in 1995, and became known as such to members of SFOR. The Hague Tribunal also had its opinion about him: Dusan Tadic who is awaiting the sentence in jail near the Hague is persistently claiming that Drljaca prevented his defence to bring witnesses who would confirm his innocence. In any case, connoisseurs of conditions in Prijedor claim that since 1992 almost nothing has happened over there without his approval or knowledge, and even Drljaca himself bragged about it in 1993 to the local press which praised his merits in "cleansing", stating explicitly that from the first day the police had fully carried out Drljaca's orders.

The general assessment is that SFOR will in near future continue with this type of operations. In the political life of Serbia, except for reproaches and accusations in the election year about who is responsibility for the fact that foreign troops are "hunting down Serbs" and fear of some of the "turbo-patriots" for their own skin, it is obviously useless to expect explanations why this is done, nor a change of the official stand concerning cooperation with the Tribunal in the Hague.

Philip Schwarm (AIM)