Interview: Predrag Radic

Like the Ancient Incas Predrag Radic, the mayor of Banja Luka, is one of the rare Bosnian Serb Republic (RS) functionaries who, as the locals say, "has not lined his pockets during this war". However, his interpretation of the latest wave of forced displacement of "non-Serbs" from Banja Luka is common: "That is propaganda coming from Muhamed Sacirbey and Archbishop Komarica. People are moving, but we are talking about people's normal desire to move someplace where their nationality predominates. The Croats and Muslims see their suffering, but they do not see the suffering of the Serbs who have both military and "work obligations". The security situation in the city is much better than it was before, the police effectively uncover the perpetrators of crimes, as for example the quickly solved murder of the Batagelj family. The perpetrators were captured and handed over to the military court. We have advised citizens not to open their door to anyone after ten o'clock in the evening, especially not the military police - the uniforms and white belts are easy to obtain. The civilian police have authority over civilian matters and, as I already said, they are doing an ever better job. However, it is hard to control everything. One mustn't forget that a flood of refugees comes into this city - Serbs, who were subject to all types of pressures intended to force them to leave Zagreb, Tuzla, Zenica and other places, and who sometimes, because they need a roof over their head, do those same things here. We try to prevent this, but it is clear that putting pressure on only one side will achieve nothing until the flood of refugees from all three sides has stopped

VREME: Where are the Croats and Muslims from Banja Luka going? RADIC: Many Croats have made property exchanges with Serbs who have fled from Western Slavonija. Some have headed for the Livno area. The Muslims head for Bugojno or Travnik, and lately Tuzla has been a popular destination. It is interesting that no one wants to go to Zenica, most likely because of the religious extremists from Islamic countries who rule there

It is possible to discuss these things with Beslagic, the mayor of Tuzla, but he now insists upon knowing the qualifications of the people that he accepts. As a result, we are also compelled to think in that way: I allow a doctor to leave, and in return I receive a pensioner or a dock worker who moves into that doctor's apartment. The county is then left without apartments for professionals. That is a complex problem. In negotiations with Zenica's mayor Spahic and Travnik's mayor Curic I told them to forget their propagandistic phrases about ethnic cleansing and for us to concentrate upon arranging a humane and civilized population exchange of those who desire to leave. For us to reach an agreement and not send these people packing with bundles and plastic bags. Unfortunately, their government rejected this

VREME: Has Banja Luka been affected by the blockade on the Drina? RADIC: We do feel it. All flows of goods other than humanitarian aid have been cut. However, the understanding part of the citizenry believes that Serbia was forced to make this move. We have already been hit by the embargo against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ), so this is nothing strange. We will endure it if things will be better for the majority of Serbs because of this

War Crimes

Dusan Vuckovic "Repic" (30), a metal worker from Umka, is the only Serb so far to go on trial for war crimes (from April to late June 1992) against Muslim civilians in the Zvornik area. He is sitting in jail in Sabac waiting for the trial, convinced that Serbia has betrayed him and that he will be tried by an unrelenting court of the state who's ethnic cleansing plans he consistently and efficiently implemented. Vuckovic is understandably confused. His older brother Vojin (32) is also facing charges of "unauthorized purchasing, carrying, manufacture and trading of weapons". Vojin, the former commander of a paramilitary formation called Zuta Osa (the name of a type of plum brandy), is not in jail pending trial. He has a clear picture of what's happening.

"The criminal charges against us and the arrest were instigated by Velibor Ostojic, a minister in the Bosnian Serb government. He smuggled over 3,700 Golf cars. 80% of the money was used to finance the war, the rest was stolen," Vojin said on November 10 last year.

The arrests of the Vuckovic brothers last November certainly were not an effort by the ruling party to bring its war criminals to trial and show the world that Serbia leans towards the rule of law. At the time, Milosevic was preparing to settle accounts with his most consistent opposition, Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj and his followers, Radical party members claim. Later, mass arrests focused only on Serbian Radical Party (SRS) volunteers, because they were suspected of having committed large numbers of atrocities in the war zones. The Serbian authorities clearly intended to compromise the already compromised killers, robbers and criminals and present the state (where the legislature was crumbling) as capable and willing to deal with criminals.

Criminals who are close to the authorities, and there are many of them, were and still are exempt from prosecution. All of the arrested were released soon afterwards and no explanation was given. Many believe they were released because someone remembered that they could speak clearly and in detail at the trials about how they went to war and what they did.

Branislav Vakic, an SRS deputy in the Serbian Parliament and a Chetnik Vojvoda, told Borba daily on September 12 that, "there is written confirmation showing that the authorities and police in Serbia were allowed to transport war booty out of Vukovar in trucks and cars". Vakic showed a Serbian police special forces document that allowed members of that police unit to take things out of Skelani that were brought out of the war zone as booty. He didn't disclose anything new since the Bosnia war was a war of robbery. SRS members and other paramilitary formations were highly rated as eliminators of Muslim civilians and plunderers.

In the end, charges were raised only against Dusan Vuckovic. The Public Prosecutor in Sabac charged him with killing and torturing civilians "during the civil war in former Bosnia-Herzegovina as a member of the Zuta Osa volunteer unit, violating international law". Vuckovic cut off a Muslim civilian's ear with a knife during an interrogation at the Celopek cultural center in Zvornik where many Muslims were kept

He admitted to the crime during the hearing, but that does not mean he will confess at the trial. The prosecutor also claims Vuckovic shot and killed 16 Muslim civilians at the cultural center. Vuckovic admitted to killing seven. There seem to be no witnesses. No one interviewed at the hearing said they saw the killings. There are no bodies, i.e. they haven't been discovered. Also the gun used in the killing hasn't been found. Hence no exhumations or autopsies. The Prosecutor also charged Vuckovic with raping a Muslim woman and stealing 1,000 DM from her, but he did not admit to that.

"I don't know if Vuckovic killed civilians," says a police reservist who was a guard at the Celopek cultural center. He'll probably appear at the trial as a witness. He explains what happened at Celopek: "Anyone who was bloodthirsty could go in there and kill as many of the innocent as he liked." "I shot at the ceiling, not at people," Vuckovic said after he was arrested. He later admitted to seven killings in Celopek. Dusan Vuckovic is an alcoholic and they say he was drunk during most of the war. His defender, Belgrade lawyer Dragoljub Djordjevic, said there wasn't a single witness who claimed Vuckovic had killed civilians. Even the hundreds of pages of the Serbian state security service report don't offer any solid proof. Interestingly, the State security had Vojin Vuckovic's war diary and allegedly lost it. If Vojin detailed who was involved in the killings and robberies it's not surprising that the diary is probably stored away somewhere.

Parliamentary Deputy Branislav Vakic now responds to the claim that Serbia was not involved in the war by saying: "Over 400 Chetniks and volunteers who were stationed at the special center on Mt. Tara, near Bajina Basta, and who fought in the battle for Srebrenica as part of the Serbian police special forces, are being systematically persecuted, terrorized and arrested now... Slobodan Milosevic has proclaimed Serb volunteers and patriots to be criminals..." A letter by Ham Tahic, a refugee from Zvornik who is now in Austria sheds some light on Celopek. But only if the letter is true.

Tahic's letter says: "We knew Dusan Vuckovic (we learned his name from the newspapers) as Repic and I know him personally. I somehow survived his harsh mistreatment and murder of imprisoned Muslim civilians, but he turned me, a healthy man, into a permanent invalid. Now I'm going from hospital to refugee camp to hospital in Austria waiting for the moment when a drunken state will sober up after sending drunken hordes across the Drina to attack unarmed and vulnerable people. Dusan Repic is no fighter. He was only a common criminal, a killer of innocent civilians in the many camps in Zvornik and surrounding villages which he visited often starting with checkpoints where Muslim workers were caught. He didn't spare workers from Novi Sad and Belgrade. He took no account of passes or permits. He identified people by tearing their pants off. He tortured them on the spot. How he did that is best shown on the photograph that was seen around the world (Der Spiegel, No 45). The picture shows three Muslims who worked at Zvornik "Inzenjering" and lived in Glumine village, being arrested at the checkpoint in Karakaj. Luckily, they survived the camps in Zvornik and Batkovic and were exchanged as prisoners of war.

People who were related were picked out before the torture and killings began. Everyone knew they would die. They were ordered to fight with poles and bars. However fierce that fight was, it never pleased the killers and they trained them to fight better by beating them unconscious. They killed their victims by putting a knife in their mouth and striking the handle of the knife with their other hand. They took the victims up onto a stage so that the rest of the prisoners could see them and sing the most orthodox Chetnik songs. Dusan enjoyed the intermingling of the songs and the cries of the victims. When the killers had gotten their fill of enjoyment on that night during Bajram, they ordered other close relatives of the victims to load the slaughtered bodies onto trucks and took them away to help with the burial. That wasn't enough for Dusan Repic. He came to see us on St. Vitus Day dressed in Serb national costume. He swore at us when he came into the camp and then "grabbed" an automatic rifle and two full clips from a guard and dropped to his knees to fire a full clip at close range. Then he stood up and loaded the second clip. The prisoners panicked and flocked together as he fired, killing or wounding more than one person with every bullet. He wasn't satisfied until the last shell was fired. His visit took the lives of: Alija Efendic, Hajro and Zulkarnej Alihodzic, Benjamin, Ahmet and Hajrudin Bikic, Mehmetalija, Medo and Alija Mustafic, Meho and Alija Dzihic Semso, Hadziavdic Ferid, Atlic Avdija, Tuhcar Amir and Ejub, Okanovic Omer and Nesib, Jahijagic Fikret, Salihovic Husin, Pasic Mujo and Edin, Halilovic Abdurahman and Hasan, Kuljanin Mustafa, Fejzic Meho, Kulin Edin and Cormehic Ibrahim." Tahic adds: "At least twice that many wounded were left behind Vuckovic, 10 in critical condition. We were left wounded like that for two whole days and none of the medical people came to help us even though Celopek is 4.5 kilometers from Zvornik. We tore up all our shirts to use as bandages to stop the bleeding. The third day they transferred us to a safer place after a petition by the Serbs in Celopek who couldn't listen to our cries any longer.

This is just what I know as an inmate of one of the Zvornik camps. There were other worse camps in Zvornik besides Celopek: Standard, Alhos, Ekonomija, the halls at the technical school, Ciglana, Novi Izvor, the cultural center in Drinjaca, Liplje, the mosques in Djulici and Kilsa, Pilica.

The Zvornik municipality was 60% Muslim during the last census. After the "liberation" of Zvornik between 4,000 and 5,000 innocent people were killed. Whole villages disappeared as well as entire parts of towns. The dead that I listed were mostly from the Divic suburb. All the men, some 190, were taken out of buses, away from their families who were expelled to Tuzla by the Serb authorities in Zvornik." Jovan Dulovic The Decision At the start of the investigation, Vojin Vuckovic was much more interesting to state security because he was the commander of the Zuta Osa paramilitary forces. The charges against him were expanded because he was suspected of thefts and robberies, but the public prosecutor dropped the criminal charges on May 6, 1994.

A decision by the district court in Sabac extended the detention of Dusan Vuckovic, but the Serbian Supreme Court accepted defense attorney Dragolub Djordjevic's appeal and abolished the decision. It explained that it had been unreasonable of the court to extend the detention under an overturned decision.

The Charges "Early in April 1992, brothers Vojin and Dusko Vuckovic, both Serbs from Umka, went to the former Bosnia-Herzegovina to help the Serb people to preserve their territories. The accused Vojin and Dusko Vuckovic arrived in Zvornik on April 7, 1992 and were captured by Muslim forces the next day and taken to the fire brigade building as prisoners. They were released that same evening in an exchange of prisoners and the brothers joined a volunteer unit in Zvornik. That night Serb units clashed with Muslim units and Zvornik was soon under the command of Serb units. Later, on April 12, 1992, the Zvornik municipality council decided to form a volunteer organization under the command of the territorial defence. Volunteers from Serbia who came to help the Serb people were deployed in that unit. On April 18, the Igor Markovic volunteer unit was formed (later renamed Zuta Osa) as part of the Zvornik territorial defence. Vojin Vuckovic was appointed unit commander and Dusan Vuckovic was in the unit. To keep the situation under control, they attacked the Divic suburb to capture it. Divic borders on Zvornik and was populated by Muslims. The attacks was aimed at disarming the population to prevent ethnic clashes. Some of the Muslim civilians were kept under guard in the Celopek cultural center on the territory of the former B-H. The police provided the guards. Dusan Vuckovic, who enjoys alcohol, revolted by his capture by Muslims and subsequent mistreatment, showed intolerance towards Muslim civilians in Celopek and he tortured, killed and wounded Muslim civilians..

Vojin Vuckovic is charged with exceeding his authority as commander of the Igor Markovic volunteer unit and crossing over to Mali Zvornik in Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with a number of his men, including Dusan Vuckovic. They were searching for lawyer Alija Efendic who he had heard had committed a number of crimes. Vojin Vuckovic and his men crossed into FRY territory on July 21, 1992, went to Gornja Koviljaca, near Loznica, and entered the house of Milisav Simic and exceeded his authority by interrogating Simic and his family about Efendic. He then arrested three Muslim women and a child and ordered them taken to Mali Zvornik. His men, including Dusko Vuckovic, obeyed. Dusan Vuckovic went towards the village of Radali in a car and threatened the woman he took with him before he raped her and stole 1,000 DM." The charges include the names of the arrested woman and the rape victim.

Power The entire time that he was in Bosnia Dusan Vuckovic had a picture of a Mujaheedin holding a Serb fighters head. The photo had been cut out from a newspaper with the caption that the Muslim fighter had cut the Serb's head off. He said that the photo gave him the strength to wreak revenge on Muslim civilians.