Twilight At High Noon

Dusan Reljic, the foreign editor of VREME, left his flat in Vojislava Ilica Street at nine o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, September 21. He got into his car, drove to the humanitarian organization ‘‘Adra'' to fetch two cardboard boxes for packages, had a short conversation there with an acquaintance of his, then stopped at the Kalenic Market to buy some breakfast and disappeared without a trace.

Dusan Reljic is responsible and organized, he does not miss meetings and in general is a conscientious and reliable person. He had promised his wife warm pastry for breakfast and agreed several appointments for that day. His car was found properly parked on the corner of Vojislava Ilica and Danila Kisa Streets; cardboard boxes and a plastic bag with cold pastry were on the front seats, the steering wheel was secured with a hook, and a car was normally locked. Nothing around the car could indicate that something unusual had taken place.

Snezana Bogavac, Reljic's wife, became anxious immediately: she telephoned the hospitals and the Belgrade police. She was told that no one like him was there and was advised to wait for 24 hours before reporting the disappearance (which is the usual procedure). She did this the following day. The inspector on duty at the Belgrade police took down the personal data and asked usual but unpleasant questions (whether the missing person had a mistress, etc.); when he heard that Reljic was a prominent journalist, he became civil and promised that their tracking service would start working on the case. The weekly VREME called a press conference on Wednesday, September 22, and informed the public about Reljic's disappearance. The storm was raised among journalistic circles: the telephones in VREME'S offices didn't stop ringing and fax messages arrived. What was worrying is that several citizens called up saying that their relatives had recently disappeared without a trace.

At about 11.30 on Wednesday evening Dusan Reljic returned home after 38 hours of captivity, which in the legal language was ‘‘ abduction'' and ‘‘illegal deprivation of freedom.'' Namely, Dusan Reljic was not arrested, taken into custody, detained or summoned for an informative talk by any authorized state organ; he was abducted in broad daylight, in a true South-American (Argentinean-Chilean) way. Nobody saw nor heard anything, not even those smarter ones... He was here one minute and gone the next. So what?

Around 9.30 on Tuesday morning, Dusan Reljic drove home from the market with fresh pastry, parked his car on the corner, in the vicinity of his building. He locked the steering wheel and began collecting his things from the car. Then, standing next to his car, he noticed a white `Golf' maneouvering on the road. Three men in the car were looking at him. One of them got out and approached Reljic. The man asked Reljic to show him his papers, to which Reljic replied by asking him to show his. The man opened his hand showing him for a split second something that might have been some sort of identity card, and Reljic showed him his driving license and car papers as well as his identity card. ‘‘Follow me,'' the man said and added, ‘‘Don't do anything stupid, so that I don't have to handcuff you in front of the whole neighborhood.'' The other man from the white `Golf' was already standing behind Reljic's back; Reljic asked to at least tell his wife what was happening but was not allowed. He got into the back of the car and was driven down Vojislava Ilica and Rimska Streets, then down the motorway and Bulevar mira Street to the Topciderska Zvezda roundabout. That's where they turned into a side-street and changed the vehicles. They took red `Zastava' pick-up with white plastic roof and explained to Reljic that he could not see where they were going. The pick-up didn't have windows in the back. When asked who they were, the kidnappers replied that they were the ones to ask questions. After about a thirty minute drive, they stopped at the street-light and Reljic heard a trolley-bus pass by. Less than five minutes later the car was backing up into a confined space. The kidnappers then said that they would have to put a black plastic (garbage) bag on his head, for a short while. With the bag on his head, Reljic was taken a dozen steps farther and found himself in a room fitted with a wall-to-wall carpet. When they removed the plastic bag, he saw he was in a room furnished with a bed, a table, chairs and a night-table (he later realized that the furniture was attached to the floor). A small bathroom with a squat toilet, a shower and a sink was behind a partition. ‘‘The average B category hotel, I've stayed in worse places,'' Reljic said. He was then told to empty his pockets and was left alone in the room. Before they left, one of the kidnappers told him, ‘‘If we had wanted it, you would be floating on the Danube now.''

Dusan Reljic was left alone in the room till 12.30 (his watch was on the table with the rest of his things). Then two men entered the room, with whom Reljic was to spend most of his time in custody: one was around forty and the other around thirty-five. No one ever introduced himself; not one name was mentioned; the two referred to each other as `he'. The only common feature of all five men which Reljic noticed was that all of them wore the same yellow `Seiko' watches. The first thing he was told by ‘‘interrogators'' definitely deserves a new line:

‘‘We don't know what to do with you. You have a simple choice: you'll either cooperate, or end up as a corpse on some battlefield.''

When Reljic mentioned the Constitution and law, he received a terse answer, ‘‘We all know on whom the Constitution and law apply.'' The two ‘‘interrogators'' played a common police game, ‘‘he hates you, and I'm defending you from him.'' However, Reljic said that their behavior was correct and polite: apart from the threat at the very beginning, no swear words or other threats were used, nor were the voices raised during the conversation in two days.

It turned out that `interrogators' knew Reljic's personal and professional biography well, displaying a high level of education, specially about political issues. Without any papers in front of them, they listed the smallest details from Reljic's professional career. They knew all about his telephone conversations, private conversations (even those held in open-space areas) and documented them with such precision which shocked Reljic. They were surprised at the fact that Reljic himself could not remember, e.g. all who attended a certain diplomatic dinner and what was said.

Reljic's interrogation focused on his contacts with foreign journalists, diplomats and scientists, and on the time period when he was a correspondent of the state news agency Tanjug from Bonn (1986-1990). `Interrogators' explained to him that he had been `naive' and failed to realize that those foreigners are mostly spies who tend to use `usual' contacts to get as much information as possible from harmless journalists and similar folk. They never once accused him of having revealed a secret, but when asked why they got him in particular, they replied, ‘‘A lot of loose ends lead up to you.'' Reljic had to recall the details, parts of conversations, people and circumstances. Whenever his memory failed they reminded him. That is how the first day of interrogation passed. When Reljic told them that his family and colleagues would be alarmed by his disappearance, `interrogators' told him that they had counted with it. He was offered food but refused; he had coffee with them and took a lot of fluid. They served coffee in paper cups and were happy to hear that he didn't take sugar in his coffee, since they didn't have any...

A man wearing fatigues entered the room in the evening and brought him sheets. Reljic could not sleep, and around dawn felt he had arrhythmia and asked for the doctor or a medicine. He immediately received a medicine, and offered to pay for it (it is expensive) but was told that it was `on the house.' The sounds which Reljic could hear during his captivity provide valuable clues: heavy traffic from a distance, locomotive sirens, airplanes and one helicopter (plus the already mentioned trolley-bus).

The session was continued the next day, but, according to Reljic, in a more relaxed and friendly manner, and occasionally turned into a discussion of political topics. The next morning they told him about the crisis in Russia (they did not reveal whom they supported) and informed him about other daily events. `Interrogators' also knew about Reljic's conflicts in Tanjug, after which he left the agency, but seemed indifferent to them. They also told him they were aware that he ‘‘doesn't support the current authorities'' but that they were not interested in that, just as they weren't interested in VREME and in what it writes. About 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 22, the second day of the abduction, they informed him that he ‘‘had been on television'' (independent television station NTV Studio B) and added that ‘‘he had almost convinced them that he was clean,'' but that they did know how long would they keep him. That evening they returned him his personal belongings, telling him that he would be released and urging him to come to his senses. When asked, ‘‘What should I say when I'm asked where I've been?,'' they told him, ‘‘Say that you were in the counter intelligence service.'' Reljic asked that two `interrogators' lead him out and return him to the city and they agreed. The procedure with a plastic bag was repeated, then a drive in a supply vehicle without windows. In the end, they opened a door and asked Reljic whether he knew where he was. It was one of the streets which intersect with Grcica Milenka Street. They shook hands and parted. Reljic did not turn around.

The same day (Wednesday) the weekly VREME sent a cold and polite letter to the Ministries of Interior Affairs and of Information (it might sound like a pleonasm, but we'll respect the form) of Serbia and Yugoslavia with a request that the case is solved ‘‘in the course of that day.'' There was no answer till Friday, unless Reljic's release is the answer. VREME has tried to obtain a formal answer (only `yes' or `no') from the authorities in Serbia and Yugoslavia whether they had anything to do with Reljic's abduction; officially, no one would say anything (the telephone at the Information Service of the Serbian Ministry of Interior Affairs was dead, while a certain lady at the Federal Ministry of Interior Affairs gave a hearty laugh and hung up). However, VREME has learned from unofficial sources that the Security Department of the Yugoslav Army denied any possibility that their people were involved; moreover, an officer with whom we talked said that it was not surprising that kidnappers had mentioned ‘‘the counter-intelligence service,'' because there are at least three such services, of which the public is unaware, and, secondly, they (Yugoslav Army's Security Service) are being attacked whatever they do anyway, so that this provided a handsome opportunity. ‘‘If they were our people, they would have taken the pastry: you know how little we earn,'' he concluded.

The question as to whether any authorized state bodies are involved in this case is actually pointless: a state organ observes the law and interior rules of the service, both of which rule out arresting someone without showing identification, using a plastic bag and holding someone in captivity in an unknown place without a court ruling; all of the above are criminal acts (false identification, illegal arrest, abduction followed by threats, and perhaps abuse of authority...) On the other hand, Reljic's kidnappers are obviously backed by operative-tactical, technical and archive resources, which only the state can afford, i.e. its security service. Considering the topics of interrogation the sector does not fall under the competence of military security (contacts between journalists and foreigners have always been a sector of the state security service). It is hard to imagine that someone might admit that the State Security Service has abducted a man in such a way, violating the law and all internal rules of the Service. So, what has actually happened?

Retired policemen, various experienced military officers and experts have proposed three possible solutions:

1) A group of authorized policemen with ‘‘strong backing'' (financial, technical and other resources as well as a political cover) has broken away and is doing something on its own, apart from the service it belongs to (whatever service it may be), with a goal to achieve or prevent something which matters to them a lot and where high stakes are in question (it may be money, position, or an equivalent of one or the other). One retired policeman has said that it is worrisome that he has learned about a large number of abductions which are similar to this one: a person disappears, is missing for some time and then turns up refusing to say anything (or gives unplausible answers of a type ‘‘I was on a drinking spree in Hungary,'' and his passport was at home.) Someone must have seriously threatened them, he says. Several former policemen believe that someone desperately needs an information and Dusan Reljic may not even be aware that he knows it. ‘‘That is why they probed him for two days, in order to confuse him so he won't notice what they are actually interested in,'' one of them said and the other one added, ‘‘It might be something from the past they are all of a sudden interested in, in order to save themselves or screw someone else. That does not necessarily have to be anything important: it is enough that the person A knows the person B, nothing more. That can make a whole lot of difference.''

2) If it isn't any of the authorized services of this state or a group of their people running wild working on their own, who could it then be? Let's imagine a strong foreign intelligence service which is interested in certain data and has people who are fluent in Serbian and the money for operative costs. What stops them from renting a big garage and two vehicles, introducing themselves as ‘‘the counter-intelligence service'' and interrogating any ‘‘naive citizen'' in order to get the information by applying much rougher means? All kinds of things are on sale in this city (someone would say even entire police stations, with a commander and a local head of interior affairs, but we find it hard to believe...), not to mention a garage and two vehicles. The person, who might undergo a similar treatment such as Dusan Reljic has, would remain convinced forever that he had talked to the organs of his state, which happened to opt for South-American methods of lawlessness and abduction.

3) It may be that some service has decidedwith the knowledge and approval of politicians (ministers, etc...)to ‘‘install order'' in a South-American way, and thus frightened everybody who dare have a different opinion by delivering a clear message, ‘‘We know everything, we listen to everything and can collect anybody as we have Reljic. Therefore, come to your senses or else you'll end up as a corpse on the front!'' If this is it, one should remember the fate and bankruptcy of the Argentinean regime which had resorted to similar and worse abductions for years, and also refer to the previous point.

The state which uses similar methods, leaving them unsolved and unpunished, is shooting itself in the foot. Speaking long-term, harm produced by lawlessness and crime can easily throw into shade petty political benefits achieved by scaring the journalists and those `who don't agree.'