New: The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet: A Memoir of Visegrad, Bosnia by Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic. Panisphere Books: October 1, 3003). ISBN: 0970421036. A moving and harrowing memoir by a survivor of mass-killings carried out in Visegrad in 1992 by the army and milities of Serbia and the Bosnian Serb Republic.
Slobodna Bosna, The
Bridges of Bosnia-Herzegovina (On the Drina Bridge at Visegrad and other
great bridges).
3 January 1994
Vreme
Kidnapped! A group of armed uniformed men kidnapped twenty passengers on February 27, 1993 from train 671 on the Belgrade-Bar line in the station of Strpci, B-H, a few kilometers from the Montenegrin border. The men were Yugoslav citizens of Moslem nationality. To this very day no one knows if they are dead or alive. Four months before this, on October 22, 1992, 17 Moslems were kidnapped from a bus in Severin, Sandzak. Yugoslav President at the time, Dobrica Cosic, set up a state commission to investigate the case. Bosnian Serb Army Commander General Ratko Mladic said that the Bosnian Serb Army did not have anything to do with the case. The authorities never said what had happened to the missing men.
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic met the relatives of the missing passengers on May 24, and said that he would search ``high and low'' to find the missing passengers. According to eye witness stories, the Serbian Police Minister said in front of Milosevic that the Serbian police had kidnapped policeman Milan Lukic, a member of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's military formations, and that they suspected him of being responsible for the kidnapping. The relatives of the missing men believed that Milosevic was sincere, and that they would receive some information about the missing men. They never did. When, after a while, the relatives of the missing men came to Belgrade again, they were kept in a hotel, far from the public eye. For a whole year the state which is supposed to guarantee the lives of all its citizens, never found a way of telling the truth about its missing citizens, or of determining if they were dead or alive.
The Times
June 4, 1994, Saturday
SECTION: Overseas news
LENGTH: 415 words
HEADLINE: War crimes trial ordered by Serbia to outflank UN
BYLINE: From Tim Judah in Belgrade
BODY:
THE Serbian authorities have extradited an alleged war criminal to
the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb Republic and a war crimes trial is
due to start soon in Serbia. The move came after the Yugoslav
government said it will not send suspects to the fledgeling United
Nations war crimes tribunal and that it intends to punish those found
guilty of war crimes at home.
Milan Lukic, 27, who has just been extradited, is believed to have led a 500-member paramilitary force called the Chetnik Avengers. They are alleged to have taken part in the kidnapping and presumed murder of 18 Muslims and one Croat, all civilians, from a train running between Belgrade and Montenegro last year. They are also suspected of carrying out civilian murders in Visegrad in 1992.
Last week a Yugoslav court committed Dusko Vuckovic, who is alleged to have murdered 16 Muslim civilians in the first days of war in Bosnia, for trial in the town of Sabac. Other trials are also believed to be in preparation.
The Lukic case and the Sabac trial have been received with scepticism by human rights activists in Serbia. Vladan Vasilijevic, a Belgrade criminologist, questioned the legality of Mr Lukic's extradition and said: ''The Sabac trial is a farce being prepared by the government to say to the international community it is carrying out its obligations under Geneva Conventions.''
Djordje Ignjatovic, vice-president of the Yugoslav government's war crimes committee, said that there will be no extraditions to The Hague ''because our constitution forbids this and Yugoslavia intends to try its own perpetrators of war crimes''.
Many suspect that the real reason that there will be no extraditions is because the trail of guilt leads right up to the top and that any criminals who were brought to justice would say that they were just obeying orders. The issue of real perpetrators is also being faced in Croatia. Josip Manolic, the former Speaker of the Croatian upper house, said that the Croat-Muslim agreement in Bosnia did not absolve President Tudjman of the part he played in the war there.
Serb pullout: The United Nations said yesterday that armed Serbs within the Gorazde exclusion zone had begun to pull back but about 50 remained. Their presence has scuppered UN plans for ceasefire talks in Geneva as the Bosnian government had made their withdrawal a precondition to the negotiations. The UN said it still hoped to convene the meeting today.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: June 5, 1994
SPOTLIGHT REPORT No. 22
MAY 1996
MUSLIM-SLAVS IN SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
2.2. Independent Findings
Investigation by the Humanitarian Law Center has established that on 22 October 1992, 16 Muslim-Slavs from Sjeverin (Serbia) disappeared. They were taken by force from a bus at Mioce, on Serb-held Bosnian territory, and never heard from again. Their names are: Medo Hodzic and his sister Mevlida Koldzic, Medredin Hodzric, Idriz Gibovic, Alija Mandal, Ramahudin Catovic, Mustafa Bajramovic, Sead Pecikoza, Mehmed Sebo, Hajrudin Sajtarevic, Ramiz Begovic, Mazafer Hadzic, Esad Dzihic, Dervis Softic, Mithad Softic, and Mujo Alihodzic.
The HLC learned that Muslim-Slav Sabahudin Catovic had disappeared from the village the day before.
Admir Dzihic, a young boy, was the only Muslim-Slav left on the bus; the abductors mistook him for the son of the Serb he was standing by. Later, in November 1992, just before leaving for a refugee camp in Turkey, Admir made a statement to an HLC field research and said he had recognized the abductors. They were Bosnian Serb soldiers he had seen around in Priboj (Serbia), he stated, and he identified them as 'a Momir, Milan Lukic and a Dragicevic',
In following up on information that the truck used to transport the victims had been towed by another truck with Priboj registration plates, the HLC discovered the second truck was owned by Miloje Udovicic, proprietor of the Zlatibor Cafe in Priboj. Udovicic told an HLC field researcher that he had been stopped at the Amfora Cafe in Mioce by some soldiers with, he said, charcoal-blackened faces. Their truck had broken down and they ordered him to tow it. Soon, however, on a hill, they were able to get their motor started, and the soldiers drove off towards Serb-held Visegrad (BH). Udovicic recounts that he drove on towards Uzice (Serbia) and that, although he realized there were people under the tarpaulin of the truck he had towed, he never saw their faces. He also stated that he recognized none of the abductors.
Immediately following the abduction, the story in Priboj was that the Serbs on the bus had recognized the abductors but were not talking out of fear. Among the eye-witnesses named who should be able to identify the abductors were Ilija Kitic, a driver from Sjeverin, the bus driver "Stojkan", Beli Vilotic, who was said to have been taken off the bus but allowed to return when he proved with his ID that he was a Serb, Mira Javorac...
...
President Milosevic informed them of the arrest of a suspect:
We have done everything possible, here and over there, across the Drina... We must find our citizens... The police has its job, but it is powerless on the other side. I have spoken with Karadzic, with Mladic and Koljevic and Krajisnik. They have promised... I've said, if they are dead, let us have our citizens. There is no higher interest for us, and there will not be a cover-up. The possibility exists that somebody from Belgrade was also involved in the abductions... There's no denying: so far it's been slow, much too slow. But this has been brought up at every contact across the Drina. The man who was arrested is in a jail here, but he was unlawfully arrested... and I told the co-chairmen so. Whoever did it wanted to sow fear and distrust and provoke conflict, to undermine the authority of the State and government. They wanted to disrupt relations among the people of Prijepolje, a town known for its good relations. We will get to the bottom of this... We will start by supposing that they are lying, and that is why our police must go across, because if it's your itch, then its up to you to scratch it.
Although the Serbian President never named the suspect arrested, frequent mention by relatives of the missing, both to the President and his associates, of Milan Lukic as the possible suspect never met with denial. During this meeting, President Milosevic categorically rejected every possibility of the abduction having been to build up a reserve of Muslim-Slavs for later prisoner exchanges with the Bosnian-Muslim forces in Bosnia. He also said the story of the abductions having been 'staged by the Muslims' was untrue and an invention 'from across the Drina'. Before ending, the President promised a public statement from the Minister of the Interior of the truth about this case within seven days.
...
In June 1993, a Belgrade independent daily 6/ carried a story reporting that on 16 April 1993 the Prosecutor's Office in Uzice (central Serbia) had filed for a criminal investigation of Bosnian Serb Milan Lukic and three of his Bosnian Serb army men on suspicion of having killed Stanimir Pecikoza, a Bosnian Serb from Visegrad, on the night of 20/21 June 1992 in the Serbian village of Mokra Gora and transporting his body by car to Serb-held Dobrun (BH), where they pushed the car into the Rzav River at a place called Oplave. Citing Investigation Judge Savic Bozovic as its source, the paper notes that no proceedings were under way against Lukic in connection with the missing persons from the train.
...
In an interview carried on 20 August 1994 by the Belgrade daily Politika, the President of FR Yugoslavia, Zoran Lilic, uses the abduction to illustrate 'disloyalty towards Belgrade' in the conduct of the Bosnian Serb de facto authorities. President Lilic states: 'Everybody came to know right away that someone by the name of Lukic had done it, it appeared in the press, and our police found him and arrested him'. The FR Yugoslav President then adds: 'but nobody wanted to help find any actual evidence against him, and the Bosnian Serbs said their courts would deal with it'. Finally, the President says, Lukic was delivered to the Bosnian Serbs at their request and he was 'set free immediately and even rewarded by the leadership of Republika Srpska.' This, President Lilic then concludes, points clearly to who thought up the whole operation, even if Lukic executed it, and to its purpose, which was to drag FR Yugoslavia into the war.
In an interview carried on 14 January 1996 by the Podgorica (Montenegro) daily Pobjeda, Montenegrin State Prosecutor Vlado Susovic left little doubt about the final fate of the missing from the train.
...
4.2 The Serbian Investigation
On 6 April 1994, investigation proceedings began before the Belgrade District Court against Milan Lukic, a member of the Bosnian Serb armed forces, on suspicion of illegal detention under Article 63 (5,1) of the Serbian Criminal Code. Called as witnesses and interrogated before the courts were Miroslav Vranic and Zoran Udovicic, both policemen with the Uzice (Serbia) Police Department and on duty on the train. Also called was the station dispatcher at the time of the abductions, Slobodan Icagic. From the court record of their interrogations it may be seen that all three witnesses were questioned three times in the immediate aftermath of the abductions: on 28 February, 17 March, and 27 May 1993.
Lukic had testified that at the time of the abductions he was at the front, at a village called Rujiste some 50 kilometers from Strpci, that he learned of the abductions from the newspapers, and that he had twice during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina been arrested in Serbia but was not questioned about the abduction of the train passengers either time. Lukic was first arrested on 10 March 1993 in Belgrade when he was sent by Bosnian Serb military headquarters in Visegrad to pick up army uniforms. He was given a two-week sentence for not reporting his presence in the city. A few days after his release, he was again arrested in Belgrade, this time on charges of illegal possession of a firearm. He was taken to Uzice and questioned, as a suspect, about the murder there of Stanko Pecikoza, a Bosnian Serb from Visegrad. He was then returned to Belgrade and only then questioned, for the first time he claimed, about the train abduction and missing persons.
Zoran Udovicic, the policeman in command of the police unit accompanying the train, testified that two groups of soldiers had boarded the train at the Strpci station, while a third had stood guard alongside the train. He said he had not seen Milan Lukic. His orders included Serbian Police Department permission for Republika Srpska military units to board the train in search of fugitives from military service with the Bosnian Serb Army. He believed this was the case and was not alarmed to see, from where he was standing, eight men taken off the train. He also saw two men he assumed were either Muslim-Slav or ethnic-Albanian because of a bag they carried marked "Azem". These men, he reports were not taken even though the bag was searched and their IDs checked.
The other policeman-witness, Miroslav Vranic, during questioning immediately following the abduction, had identified Lukic as one of the abductors. On 14 April 1994, however, he was absolutely sure he had not seen Milan Lukic on the train, but had, instead, shaken hands with a soldier who had said: 'Hi, I'm Dragan'. He now claimed that fear of his superiors, because of disciplinary action against him on several occasions, had made him say at his first questioning that he recognized Milan Lukic. He had seen Lukic at the Uzice police headquarters, so when a police inspector showed him a picture and asked if he had ever seen the man on it, Vranic said it was Lukic. The Witness, otherwise, had not considered there was anything unusual about soldiers boarding the train. They introduced themselves as Bosnian Serb military police, and he believed that, as on earlier occasions, they were out to catch Bosnian Serb deserters. This time, as on all earlier occasions, he considered it his duty to help them. This is why he went through the train ahead of them telling the passengers to prepare their documents for inspection.
Vranic testified he heard soldiers address passengers as 'Comrade" but also heard some say 'Hi, buddy', and that he only realized the soldiers were not hunting Bosnian Serb deserters when he saw them take a young Muslim-Slav off the train. He heard the soldiers explain they were taking some men for a special check. When the soldiers were getting off the train he heard one group identify itself as Chetniks and warn the Muslim-Slavs they should not travel through these parts without a passport.
According to the testimony of the station dispatcher, Slobodan Icagic, 10 soldiers armed with guns and grenades entered his office about 20 minutes before the train reached the station. He noticed the absence of any markings on their olive-green camouflage uniforms, but also that the men were well-dressed and clean, and had their hair cut short. One of them, blond and shortish, checked Icagic's identity papers. The same one asked when the train was due and ordered the dispatcher to stop the train in order to remove deserters and weapons. When Icagic said he would have to notify the Dispatchers Office in Pozega (Serbia) to get permission, this same soldier threatened him: 'You'll be ours if the train goes by'. The witness testified he was nevertheless able to report the unplanned stop before the train pulled into the station. Through an office window which looked out on the tracks, he watched soldiers taking passengers off the train. When he saw among them his co-worker Memovic from Prijepolje (Serbia) and heard him call 'Slobo, brother, help me', he went out in front of his door and said to the soldiers: 'Hey men, that's my man, we work together!' One of the men swore in reply and stopped him with the warning: 'Want us to take you along, too?' He saw some 20 men taken off the train.
On 27 April 1994 the Belgrade District Court ruled that the criminal investigation against Milan Lukic be suspended. The Court found that the eye-witness testimony of the two Uzice policemen and the dispatcher at the Strpci station did not provide sufficient evidence of the grounds alleged for the investigation in the 6 April 1994 petition of the Belgrade District Prosecutor. In addition, the District Prosecutor had formulated only the supposition that the abducted passengers were no longer alive, while family members of the missing had submitted no proof of the death of any of the abducted men. Lukic was released on the day of the ruling. The Belgrade District Prosecutor appealed the ruling.
The very next day, 28 April 1994, in the Belgrade District Court, extradition proceedings began against Lukic as a citizen of a foreign state. Investigation Judge Dobrivoje Gerasimovic ordered Milan Lukic to be held under articles 527 and 528, in connection with Article 191 (2.1) of the Law on Criminal Procedure, specifying that he would be held no longer than 30 days. Cited in the order was the extradition request of a lower Sarajevo Court, in Pale (seat of the de facto Bosnian Serb government), on charges against Lukic of armed robbery in Republika Srpska.
On 24 May 1994, just prior to Lukic's extradition to Republika Srpska, the Serbian Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the Belgrade District Court suspending criminal investigation proceedings against Lukic for the illegal detention of the train passengers. The Supreme Court cited in its ruling the denial by the accused of the charges against him and the failure of the prosecution's witnesses - Vranic, Udovicic and Icagic - to make a positive identification of the accused during their testimony.
On May 27, 1994, Milan Lukic was delivered to the de facto authorities of Republika Srpska.
...
On 21 September 1994, the Committee reported that despite intensive efforts it remained unable to obtain a single fact to clarify at least in part the disappearance of the train passengers. Special note was made of the failure of FR Yugoslavia President Zoran Lilic to answer the Committee's request for further details in support of his public accusation of the abduction having been the work of Milan Lukic but on orders of the Bosnian Serb leadership.
15 August 1996
Michael Sells
... While Gojko Jankovic is not a major figure (such as Vojislav Maksimovic and Velibor Ostojic, the Republika Srpska leaders who organized the attack on Foca), he is a central player, a key gear in a genocidal program. That program was consistent throughout Southeast Bosnia, from Vlasenica, where Dragan Nikolic played the Jankovic role, to Visegrad, where Milan Lukic from Serbia played the Jankovic role, to Rogatica, Bratunac, Cerska, and of course Srebrenica and Zepa /3/ on a special scale. ...
Copyright, 1996 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The following news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of Reuters Ltd.
By Jovan Kovacic
BELGRADE, Aug 2 (Reuter) - Montenegrin police said on Friday they were holding a witness to a massacre by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries of Moslem passengers taken from a train running between Serbia and Montenegro in 1993. The Montenegrin ministry of interior said it was holding Dusko Petrovic, 36, from the Serbian town of Veliko Gradiste, "for failure to report a criminal act -- the abduction of passengers from a train in Strpci on February 27, 1993," the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported.
Strpci is a small Serb-held town in a 20-km (12-mile) stretch of Bosnia through which trains running from Serbia to Montenegro -- the two republics left in rump Yugoslavia -- must pass due to rugged mountain terrain. A group of Bosnian Serb paramilitaries stopped the train and abducted 21 passengers, all but one of them Moslems and citizens of Serbia. Their fate is unknown.
Bosnian Serb military sources say the men were shot in order to provoke unrest in Serbia's mainly-Moslem area of Sandzak and draw rump Yugoslavia openly into the Bosnian conflict.
Some sources also say the operation was mounted to embarrass Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic, who was at the time preparing to press the Bosnian Serb leaders to accept an international peace plan to end the Bosnian war.
In a statement to police in Podgorica, Montenegro, Petrovic said that in August 1991 he had fought in the Eastern Slavonian region of Croatia as a volunteer, after which, early in 1993, he moved to Visegrad, a mainly Moslem town in Bosnia.
Petrovic and some locals were asked to join a paramilitary formation headed by Milan Lukic, also a local, the police said, quoted by Tanjug.
Lukic was arrested in Serbia in 1993 and spent time in jail but was later expelled to Bosnian Serb territory.
Petrovic alleges that he refused to join the unit and turned down an offer to take part in the train abduction operation.
He said he learned on February 27 that the operation had been carried out and that the kidnapped passengers, of Moslem nationality, had been taken to the Visegrad area.
Petrovic said he was taken to the local hydroelectric power station, where he saw seven people lined up who he was told were abducted from the train. Petrovic told police the soldiers sprayed the men with automatic weapon fire and the victims fell into the River Drina.
The Montenegrin opposition has accused the authorities in Serbia and Montenegro of covering up the atrocity.
Dragisa Burzan, a Social Democrat deputy in the Montenegrin parliament, said his party was planning to send videotaped testimony by a witness to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague and would demand that state authorities do the same.
REUTER