The Rule Of The Truncheon

The lawyers said a complaint would be lodged to the court of second instance because the higher court has turned down the proposal by the defense to exclude the investigation report from the court files due to ``gross mistakes during the investigation procedure'' i.e. excess police brutality. The audience in the court applauded the lawyers` wit, and there was a big celebration for the defense at the local Hotel ``Vrbik.'' Nobody seemed to notice what yet another delay meant for the accused: 14 members of this group will enter their ninth month of captivity. It may be that the lawyers find it hard to believe that the sentences could be shorter than nine months. The public, on the other hand, could anticipate their lengthy stay behind bars as the trial turned into a showdown between the Sandzak Muslims and the Serbian regime.

The authorities never for the moment lost their control. The roundups in the villages on the Pesterska visoravan (the Pester Plateau) and in the town of Prijepolje continued. Reports of raids and arrests incessantly arrived in the branch office of the Muslimruled Party of Democratic Action (SDA) in Sandzak. According to the still unprocessed data, about 150 Muslims have been arrested in Prijepolje, 15 of them have already been taken to the district prison in Uzice, and the records show thousands of raids in the villages in the area of Pester. A number of complaints about police brutality has risen accordingly. The people of Sandzak have lodged their complaints to local humanitarian organizations, such as the Committee for Protection of Human Rights in the provincial capital of Novi Pazar, rather than to the state. A statement given by Abit Kuc from the village of Ugao can be found in a thick file, ``Three policemen (Mile Nedic, Dragan Paunovic and one other man) arrived in front of my house about 7 o'clock in the morning on Friday, December 3,1993. They took a book, told me that my name is `on the list` and asked me to hand in a machinegun and a pistol. I said I did not have these weapons and could not have possibly obtained them. They laughed and said, ``How can you say that when your name's on the list?''... I was told to take my I.D. and follow them... They drove towards Borostica. In the car they asked me where I had hidden the arms and I replied, `I don't have any firearms.` Mile Nedic hit me in the head with a fist and said, `If you don't have any, then you'll go and buy some and bring it.` I said, `If you let me go, I'll sell the only cow I've got, and if I manage to buy a gun I'll buy it.` He hit me again.

I was led into a local office in Barastica. Seven policemen, all of them young, entered the room. I did not know them. They told me to confess about the arms unless I wanted to take a beating. I was told to take off my boots which I did. They put me on the table, the seven men grabbed me and started beating my soles with truncheons. I jumped off the table with pain and screamed out loud. I fell, and all of them started kicking me and beating with truncheons whatever part of my body they could reach... They beat me mercilessly in a real Chetnik way as if I were not a human being. I was hurt, maltreated, ruined... I don't know what to do.''

There are scores of similar stories hidden behind the snow drifts which block the roads to the villages on the plateau. One story, also recorded by the Committee, testifies about police oppression and the excessive use of truncheons. Muris Tandirovic, a cafe owner, claims that he was arrested because of one look at a bunch of drunk policemen: ``They swore at me, hitting me with fists and kicking me. Then one man said, `You can go now and tell Nikola (the head of the local police) or to Slobodan Milosevic. F*** them, too','' Tandilovic said in his statement.

The second story is not connected with the ``investigation of arms,'' the first one remains unfinished in that sense. Abid Kuc has not told us whether he possessed any weapons. The Information Service of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior never issued an approval for the briefing with the operatives in the field, so that the information about 2,000 rifles confiscated from the Muslims in Sandzak is to be considered reliable, but still unofficial. The Muslims will not deny the fact that they have arms. However, they will immediately list a number of reasons for arming themselves.

``We have been threatened by Vuk Draskovic, by Arkan and by Seselj. The army passed through the town with tanks, the reservists drove trucks, all of them were fully armed,'' this is often heard in Novi Pazar. Ismail Gracanin, the brother of the arrested Sefket Gracanin, has said that the army tanks and guns were positioned only 500 or 600 meters away from his brother's house. ``My brother and his neighbors decided to do something. They were afraid that the army would attack them,'' Ismail said. His brother was eventually arrested and the neighbors had to hand in their arms. Not every one who had arms was subject to arrest. ``One happened to go out on the terrace and see a soldier sunbathing on the tank on the hill above the house. One gets the impression that the barrel is pointed at ones own house,'' said Kasim Zoranic, the head of the Liberal Bosnian Organization in Novi Pazar.

Live pictures of soldiers were followed by television reports on ``Alija's warriors,'' ``Muslim jihadfighters,'' ``Alija's hordes,''...

At about the same time, on this side of the Drina River, the passengers on the bus from the nearby town of Sjeverin went missing, the Muslim passengers from the train on the BelgradeBar railway were abducted, and local warlords like Ceko Dacevic imposed a reign of terror in the villages around Pljevlja... The investigation of this incidents has taken too long to be taken seriously.

Arming of Serbs is often taken as a mitigating circumstance for arming of Muslims. The statement of Vojislav Seselj, the leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), to the Belgrade weekly NIN, is a strongest document. He said, ``Not one of our members was found in possession of arms. They found Milenko Petrovic from Sid had one automatic rifle, which he got from the Serbian Ministry of the Interior when the people in the border belts of Srem and Sandzak were being armed...''

Seselj's testimony gave rise to doubts even when it comes to ``state-sponsored arming'' of one people, which is a stereotypical story that goes: all Serbs were told to leave the light on, but one Muslim did it by accident and found a rifle on his doorstep. It is also rumored that the arms were brought in by helicopters. Whatever way they may have been brought in, Serbs are wellarmed, as can be heard at Christmas and Orthodox New Year's Eve. Muslims also celebrate their religious holidays by shooting, especially at Bairam. ``There has never been so much shooting as this year,'' an elderly citizen from Novi Pazar said.

The satisfaction of shooting during a holiday costs between 500 and 1,000 German Marks, which is the amount Faruk Pljakic from the village of Trnave near Novi Pazar had to pay to an unknown dealer for an AK47 assault rifle. He said he bought it in order to ``defend his house, children and property.'' When asked against whom he said that he had received threats from many parties and again brought up Seselj, Arkan, ``White Eagles.'' Pljakic returned the rifle after he received the orders from the Serbian Ministry of the Interior thus sparing his back a beating. ``I did not want to give them an excuse to beat me,'' he said and added he held all politicians responsible.

Faruk Pljakic is one of those who escaped the prison and the beating, although he had a weapon. One question bothers the people: what are the criteria to make someone liable to arrest? What triggers the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) is the question of who is behind such large shipments of smuggled arms which bear a stamp of the military factory ``Zastava'' from Kragujevac.

Meanwhile, the search for arms continues. Some of those who hand it in, get released immediately. Others, who do the same, remain in captivity for a long time. Both the former and the latter grow restive, while the Party of the Democratic Action seems to be the loser in both cases. As a populist party it cannot allow itself to give up on its people, even though they may be armed, while, on the other hand, it has to wash its hands of arming and separatist ideas ascribed to ``group 25.'' Sulejman Ugljanin, the party leader, wanted by the Serbian police is still at large in Turkey, and will be tried in a separate court case. He left on July 6 and the police knocked on his door on July 13. (Serbia had another famous political prisoner at the timeVuk Draskovic). The party is disoriented, its voters are not reliable, and the electorate seems to be ready for redistribution.

During the last elections (SDA did not participate), in the municipality of Tutin where 97 per cent of the population are Muslim, the turnout was 47 percent. The largest percentage of the votes43 per cent went to the Socialist Party of Serbia.