Momir Admits All

by Velizar Brajovic

Montenegrin Public Prosecutor Vlado Susovic has not said yet if he has managed to overcome some of the ``obstacles'' he has encountered in trying to determine who is responsible for the notorious hunt on refugees carried out by the Montenegrin authorities in the spring of 1992, and their later handing over to Bosnian Serbs. VREME covered the story extensively in Digest No. 133, along with the letter by Montenegrin Police Minister Nikola Pejakovic to the wife of a man who had been deported.

We do not know if the Public Prosecutor has ``slowed down'' and definitely abandoned the idea of ``seeing the matter to the end.'' There are indications however, that the authorities are searching for a solution which would absolve those responsible.

This is the message conveyed by Montenegrin President Momir Bulatovic's answer on being asked by VREME's journalist if the Montenegrin authorities would start proceedings against those who had ordered the deportation of the refugees. Bulatovic said: ``Some world humanitarian organizations involved in protecting human rights and some newspapers have remembered the mistake which was made at the time of the outbreak of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. As soon as the Montenegrin authorities learned of the mistake, the practice of deporting refugees was stopped. Our investigation has shown that the man responsible at the time acted in accordance with the uninterrupted practice of cooperation between republican ministries of the interior. I must remind you that before the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, there was unhindered communication between these ministries and that after one of them had made a demand for the extradition of a person wanted by the police or a criminal, the procedure was automatically followed up. This unfortunately proved to be a tragic mistake and slip up. A more detailed analysis will probably be needed to determine when precisely during the confusion of war, obligations to act according to demands by the authorities of the former Yugoslav Republic of BH ended.''

Susovic and Bulatovic, however, are very much aware that the persons handed over to Bosnian leader Radovan Karadzic's army and police, were not criminals. Police Minister at the time Pavle Bulatovic knows this too, and the fact that Serb and Muslim refugees were deported, as well as some Montenegrin citizens; that the Serbs were despatched to the front immediately, and that the Muslims, if they survived jail, were exchanged for captured Serb territorial fighters. This much has been admitted by the present Montenegrin Minister of the Interior Nikola Pejakovic in a letter to Danijela StuparTitoric informing her that her husband had been handed over with a group of 34 persons to be exchanged for captured Serb territorial fighters.

The ``uninterrupted practice'' mentioned by Momir Bulatovic could not exist with the police and military authorities of the recently proclaimed Serb Republic in BH, because the Montenegrin authorities have not recognized it to this very day. The refugees could not be deported at the demand of the then internationally recognized state of BH in which war had been waging for a month and a half.