Dangerous Precedents

Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader Vojislav Seselj and four other SRS Federal Parliament deputies were pronounced guilty of obstructing the federal police in their duties and received suspended sentences. Political trials in Serbia are alive and well and, according to some experts, they have a bright future ahead. Those trials have a rich tradition.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) imported the infamous article on enemy propaganda directly from Soviet legislature. The SFRY criminal code's article 133 was actually the twin brother of Soviet article 58. That article created and filled the Soviet Gulag (interestingly, the precursor of that article appeared on the third day after the October revolution in a decree on the press which Lenin himself wrote). Lawyer Nikola Barovic says article 133 (changed under SFRY Prime Minister Ante Markovic, but not done away with altogether) is used against political rivals as a form of "war by other means". After the 8th session of the Serbian central committee, which brought about a change of regime in Serbia, Kosovo Albanian leader Azem Vllasi went on trial. The start of that trial was spectacular. Slobodan Milosevic, then Serbian Communist Party President, stood before a "spontaneous" rally of support for Kosovo's Serbs and Montenegrins in front of the Federal Parliament and promised to arrest Kosovo Albanian leaders. That sort of thing was unimaginable in Yugoslavia at the time, but Vllasi was arrested. The trial turned into a farce which damaged the authorities themselves most and Vllasi was freed on April 24, 1990.

More recently, Serbia saw two failed attempts to put Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) leader Vuk Draskovic on trial. He went on trial after the March 1991 demonstrations in Belgrade, but the prosecutor simply did not pursue the case. Last year he was generously amnestied by Milosevic because of resistance in Serbia and appeals by four of the five permanent members in the UN Security Council. US President Clinton wrote to Draskovic in jail, French President Francois Mitterand wrote to Milosevic and sent his wife to Belgrade with the letter, and British Prime Minister John Major spoke up as well as Russian President Yeltsin. The Draskovic trials proved a failure for the regime.

"The noveltyin political trials," Barovicsays, "is that the authorities, while still fighting political rivals, are now trying to frame them for conventional crimes instead of using legal articles which were made to order for political showdowns. That's because, officially, everyone is distancing themselves from the previous regime and those articles are linked to that regime, even though they're still using the same methods."

There's no great philosophy behind the Seselj trial. The SRS leader is engaged in a serious clash with his former war allies, the Socialists, and the trial shows that their conflict is in the cold war stage (but could become an armed clash). Seselj was a good ally to Milosevic in helping to preserve the party-state by invoking national interests. Since the regime now believes it has stabilized, it doesn't need Seselj any longer and would like to distance itself from the war. Seselj has become superfluous. "Legally," Barovic says, "the only debatable point is that the Federal Parliament deputies were put on trial under the law on public order and anything that happens in the Federal Parliament should be dealt with under the federal criminal code. The law on public order can regulate the behavior of the republican, not the federal, police." Barovic sees a dangerous precedent in these efforts to regulate the behavior of federal bodies through republican laws.

But, to get back to Seselj's insults to the President ("He's the biggest criminal"). The trial for "offending the reputation of the President of the republic" has not even been initiated yet. Possibly because the new Serbian criminal code hadn't been adopted when Seselj voiced the insult and the old code covered "offending the reputation of the Socialist Republic of Serbia" and its officials so that "the figure Seselj insulted wasn't protected" (Barovic). The regime still has to get out of that legal problem, but for now Seselj faces a possible problem that his suspended sentence could send him to jail during the next similar incident. He is now completely dependent upon the whims of the authorities.

Attorney Rajko Danilovic says: "Trials under communist regimes served to preserve the monopolistic rule of the single party. They were primarily aimed at scaring political rivals. Their elimination by the political police, prosecutors and courts were initiated by the regimes. The current trial of Muslims in Novi Pazar and the one being prepared in Bijelo Polje are obviously not suited to a multi-party parliamentary democracy in Serbia and Montenegro, but they are a function of the authoritarian tendencies and nationalism. Scaring minorities, especially their political representatives, through political trials is part of the tendencies of the parliamentary system in Serbia and Montenegro. Notably, only the SPO and Civic Alliance protested against those trials. All of the other parties are keeping quiet or silently approving and have forgotten that they could be the next target."

The lawyers VREME interviewed agree that more political trials against rivals could come among the Serb majority. The Seselj trial could be a precursor of a wave of trials. Seselj could have been chosen as the first because he is unpopular abroad, a man with virtually no allies, and so that the new stage of clashes with undesirable political figures could easily begin.

Barovic believes that the Seselj and Sandzak Muslims' trials are the mildest form of political repression. "The breakup of the state and party system prevented the persecution of enemies through legal means and the regime transferred to extra-legal means, charateristic of South American dictators. No one persecutes you, but you disappear, your house is blown up, your family abused. The cleansing of Sandzak villages close to the Bosnian border was characteristic as well as the infamous events in Hrtkovci, but Hrtkovci were a concession to Seselj while the terror in Sandzak has a clear military and strategic goal related to the struggle for territories. In short, political rivals were more secure in Socialist Yugoslavia than they are now. There was never any mass disappearance of people."

Milosevic can choose; he'll either stop at this point, in accord with his new found love for peace and the civilized world and start to inaugurate law and order; political trials and other current practices would have to end; or he'll embrace trials and perhaps even organize the persecution of anyone in Serbia who supports Karadzic. Perhaps he'll use a little of both and, as he's done before, do someting different.

While the pace of political trials is not slowing (even in the army, for both deserters and officers), some basic changes are taking place. In the SFRY, political"enemies" could stem from nationalism, ideological clashes or a wider political conflict; most political trials today are ethnic and are not conducted under laws on political crimes. The charges are mainly for desertion, against people with two passports (one FRY, the other from a former Yugoslav republic), and there are a lot of charges of war crimes. The war crimes trials cover very few Serbs, which the authorities say is because it did not control the areas where the crimes were committed. The authorities give no explanation of how they caught members of other naitonalities. Lawyers say it is also disputable whether or not the witnesses are enemies of the accused.

Espionage

Andjelka Stefanov was recently sentenced to three and a half years in prison on charges of spying for the German BND intelligence service. The court in Nis didn't think it was important that her information came from the daily press, nor did it take into account the fact that she had only completed six grades of school.

Sandzak Muslims on Trial

On Wednesday, September 21, the prosecution completed the gathering of evidence for its trial of 25 Muslims accused of "attempting to break off the territory of Sandzak from Yugoslavia and the illegal possession of weapons, ammunition and explosives to that end". The documented evidence includes a Memorandum and declaration by the Muslim National Council (MNV) of Sandzak, the constitution of the republic of Sandzak, receipts for confiscated weapons and ammunition, precise maps... Defence lawyers had some objections to the evidence, which the defendants were not found to be in possession of and which lawyer Azem Vllasi said "the defendants have nothing to do with". The trial began in February, when the defence lawyers disputed the legitimacy of the procedure. They first objected against "the endless whimfulness of the police". They also wanted the investigation report removed from the trial records because of signs of poor investigation present in it.

"... The prosecution only offered evidence gotten by torture. The evidence was gathered through police torture and the statements were worded by the police and entered into the records. The investigation literally violated and disregarded every article of the law on criminal proceedings," defence lawyer Rajko Danilovic said.

"Defence lawyers were not allowed to attend a single interrogation; the investigation was conducted in the state security building in Kraljevo and the notaries were either security service employees or police officers who interrogated and tortured the defendants; the accused mostly kept quiet while the investigating judge, unobstructed by defence lawyers, copiedrecords which wereworded by securityservice inspectors. Under the law on criminal proceedings, the police are obliged to bring prisoners in front of an investigating judge within three days. In this case, that took six to nine days, which was not an accident because the political police needed time to frame them..."