Death in the Government's Presence

Less than two weeks after the Kragujevac District Court sentenced to death Zoran Jevremovic, the leader of a criminal group which had robbed and murdered in Sumadija (region of central Serbia), new death sentences are expected in the Belgrade Hall of Justice. The sentencing of Ilija Vujic "Bumbar" and Zeljko Loncaric "Lonce", charged with the murder of the Zidic family on Pohorska Street in Belgrade, will be announced on Thursday. If the court accepts the prosecutor's request, these will be the first death sentences given in Belgrade in over twenty years and November 1994 will assume a prominent place in the recent history of the Serbian justice system.

The two above-mentioned cases in Kragujevac and Belgrade have many similarities: they involve serious robberies with fatal consequences for the victims; in both cases, the murderers were aware that the families were at home when they embarked upon the robberies and planned the murders in advance; in both cases, the victims were entire families, including children; and, finally, the perpetrators belong to the same social stratum of petty criminals. The only noticeable difference of possible importance is that Vujic and Loncaric had the opportunity to "perfect" their trade on the battlefield, something VREME has already written about. Public opinion, charged by the horrible details of the Pohorska Street murder, seems to have already committed itself to the death sentence. Describing Vujic as a brutal and merciless man, "a liar inept at anything other than crime", the Belgrade daily VECERNJE NOVOSTI says that "it will remain unknown why such a person registered as a volunteer and joined the fighters of the Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK) in their just struggle".

The time that Vujic and Loncarevic spent on the battlefield was a reason for their defenders to bring into question the moral right of this country to sentence their clients to death. "When the nation sent Ilija Vujic and other young men to the front lines to kill, a part of that same nation supported this, some of the people were silent, and only a small number of people raised their voices against war. Ilija Vujic signed up as a volunteer, was wounded, and returned from the battlefield an invalid, "without a dime". He received an invalid's pension of 10 pfennings a month... No one offered him or other soldiers any help upon their return. Instead, they were greeted by the police at the border", said attorney Ninoslav Majacic during his concluding statement. "I think everyone has seen enough killing".

Not everyone. During the last two decades, an average of three death sentences a year were given in all of former Yugoslavia. Serbia is on the road to keeping up that tempo all by itself (the last death sentence in Montenegro was given thirty years ago, although it is today allowed by law). The break-away republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and even Bosnia-Herzegovina) abolished or suspended the death penalty immediately before the disintegration of Yugoslavia. To add to the paradox, "rump" Yugoslavia also abolished it: the new federal criminal law does not provide for it at all. Federal law regulates only criminal acts against federal bodies (for example, the Army of Yugoslavia - VJ) or acts outlawed by international law (terrorism, genocide, war crimes). This has created a paradoxical situation in which a "common" murderer could rescue himself from execution if he could make his crime appear to be ethnic cleansing. On the other hand, someone who blew up the Army General-Staff or the Yugoslav Parliament with all of its representatives could receive the death penalty only if the prosecutor proved that the accused had done it for personal gain.

"This is legislative schizophrenia", says well-known Belgrade attorney Ivan Jankovic, author of the most complete domestic monograph to date about the death penalty ("Death in the Government's Presence", Belgrade, 1985). Jankovic explains the "federal" abolition of the death penalty as a process set in motion by former Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovic, when Yugoslavia was more or less intact and, as such, had a chance to step forward onto the doorstep of the European Union (then European Community). One of the conditions for joining was the absence of the death penalty.

The related Statute in Serbia today states that the death penalty must be executed by a firing squad (as in the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia), early in the morning, in an unpopulated area, generally in a prison in the district in which the sentence was given. In addition to the firing squad, only officials (judge, public prosecutor, prison warden, doctor, a recording secretary) can be present at the execution, and, eventually, "researchers, under the condition that they have a legitimate interest". The sentenced party is first tied to "a suitable pole", his eyes are obligatorily covered, and then the firing squad, made up of at least eight people, most often prison guards, approaches. According to someone's naive idea, half of the rifles are loaded with blanks so that the executors can salve their consciences (everyone who has experience with firearms knows that a gun loaded with blanks "shifts" with much greater difficulty). The firing squad commander places the sentenced at "the proper distance" (a few meters) and gives the order to fire. If the sentenced party survives, the procedure is repeated until successful. The sentence is considered executed when the doctor has pronounced death. All those who were present are obliged to keep quiet about what they have witnessed because this is an official secret. Those who are executed are buried in the municipal cemetary; their family has the right to know where the grave is located, but they do not have the right to be present at the burial, as well as to build a gravestone or any other memorial on the sight.

In the republican Ministry of Justice, it was not possible to obtain figures about the number of people sentenced to death in the past few years or the number of sentences carried out. It is clear that those awaiting execution include Milan Ivkovic, sentenced in April of 1994 for the murder of Judge Zivka Videnovic in Nis, as well as a number of convicts "left over" from previous years. This waiting, which many believe to be more horrible than the sentence itself, is very likely to be prolonged here: according to figures from 1980, those sentenced to death here spend between 13 and 40 months awaiting execution, until all possibilities of having the sentence eased are exhausted. The final possibility lies with the President of the Republic (in this case, Slobodan Milosevic), who has the right to pardon the sentence. A rejection of the plea for pardoning significantly speeds up the procedure: the law dictates that the sentence must be executed within a period of less than 48 hours so that the agony of waiting will not be unnecessarily extended.

The movement to abolish the death penalty, which reached its pinnacle in Serbia and Yugoslavia during the early 1980's, when there was still hope that the country would come to its senses, disappeared with that hope. Supporters of the movement then argued that the taking of a citizen's life is recognition of the defeat of an entire society and the biggest disgrace that a country could willingly accept. In a war in which human life was shown to be the least expensive commodity, the state and society meanwhile showed that they could do worse and thereby brought an end to every debate about this question.