Prison For Survivors

VREME reporters recently saw a three hour video of the fall of the Bjelovar garrison in late September 1991. The tape, made by Croatian troops, and the testimony of one of the survivors (later exchanged) Yugoslav Peoples' Army (JNA) officers just confirms many of the doubts voiced to date concerning the responsibility of JNA leaders for the senseless casualties and capture of a huge amount of JNA military equipment. They also confirm the fate of people who expected the supreme command to do something: survivors went to prison, the dead were decorated.

The Bjelovar garrison (part of the Varazdin corps) fell to Croatian troops on September 29, 1991, a week after general Vlada Trifunovic left Varazdin with his soldiers.

A total of 26 JNA officers and enlisted men died or were executed in the one day of fighting in Bjelovar. Surviving officers and men were captured and all the mechanized brigade's equipment was confiscated. Both the Bjelovar and Varazdin garrisons had been promised help but it never came. The high command planned to allow part of their forces to be surrounded and sacrificed in territories which did not have majority Serb populations. The units did not have full complements and their combat readiness was not high. They were abandoned (in both cases) to the mercy of an incomparably more powerful enemy.

The Bjelovar story was taped starting in the early morning of September 29. The previous night, the JNA survivor said (he insisted on anonymity), the Croatian forces sent emissaries into the barracks with an ultimatum for commander colonel Rajko Kovacevic to surrender by morning. "Kovacevic refused," the anonymous officer said. "He didn't take the envoys hostage as Trifunovic did in Varazdin. Obviously he believed the promises of help from his superiors. Unlike Varazdin, we were just 20 kilometers from the first Serb villages and we could have withdrawn without a lot of casualties with help from outside. The area around Bjelovar is ideal for airborne troops and air strikes which we were promised. If he hadn't believed the promises of his superiors, an honorable and capable officer like Kovacevic would never allow his soldiers to die senselessly in a battle against an overwhelmingly more powerful enemy. There were just over 200 of us in the barracks and we were surrounded by 7,000 Croatian troops."

The Croatians launched fierce attacks against the barracks as soon as the ultimatum expired at 7 am. They fired howitzers and mortars. A cameraman taped almost every shell. The off-camera comments show that the Croatian troops were getting closer to storming the barracks by the hour.

The Bjelovar battle was over by 18:30 hours on September 29. Just before that the Croatians broke into the barracks and cut the defenders off in two groups. Colonel Kovacevic ordered his men to cease firing and surrendered.

"When the barracks feel, the Croatians ordered us to fall in line. It was getting dark. Just 10 minutes later they took Kovacevic away and we heard shots. In the next few minutes they shot his deputy Miljko Vasic and security officer Dragisa Jovanovic. They also shot six reservists later," the anonymous officer said.

"I can't say who ordered the executions," he added. "I assume it was Josip Tomsic, a former JNA officer and commander of the anti-tank battalion in Bjelovar who deserted just two weeks before the attack. He led the attack against us. He knew everything about the barracks. Serbs who left Bjelovar later and brought the video out said the executions could only have been ordered by Tomsic, head of the Croatian crisis staff Jure Simic or territorial defence commander Stjepan Budimski. The night before the attack they came to negotiate and it's a pity we didn't take them hostage but who could have imagined that our command would betray us and not send help."

"Most of the captured officers and men were exchanged two months later, in November 1991," the officer said. "Some officers had been tortured and went home crippled physically and mentally. Most of us feel cheated. And what should the children left behind by Kovacevic and the other executed officers say (they were all given posthumous decorations). They were all sacrificed senselessly abandoned to the mercy of a more powerful enemy. I followed the court martial of general Vlada Trifunovic and all I can say is that the sentence is ridiculous. Trifunovic can't be blamed for the fall of Bjelovar. We knew he had powerful weapons but we also knew he didn't have the manpower to use it. Early in September, the high command ordered the release of the senior generation of soldiers from Bjelovar and Varazdin. That was just one of the wrong assessments prior to the fighting. Bjelovar fell a whole week after Varazdin. Everyone could see that we were next. Why didn't anyone help us?"

Trifunovic confirmed at his court martial that he had asked the high command to send reinforcements to Bjelovar immediately after he left Varazdin. The minutes of a supreme command meeting show that it discussed Bjelovar on September 30, a day after garrison fell and 26 officers and men were executed or killed in fighting. The meeting concluded that Bjelovar was "attacked and fell yesterday" and that there would be more attacks against JNA garrisons. A supreme command member said on September 30 there were another 4,000 JNA soldiers in Croatia and insisted that the senseless sacrificing of those men had to be prevented even at the cost of equipment and territory.

That man appeared as the crown witness in the Trifunovic trial, fiercely accusing them of not fighting to the last man.

The Sentence

The five Varazdin corps officers who were sentenced to prison terms late last year finally got the court's ruling on paper and can appeal it now after waiting for two months. Under the law the court was obliged to put its ruling on paper and hand it to everyone involved within 15 days. Colonel Radomir Gojovic, president of the Belgrade military tribunal, explained recently that he couldn't meet the deadline; there simply wasn't enough time to read the court records and type out the 130 page ruling.

Gojovic complained that the 15 day rule had been adopted 20 years ago when courts martial were not as complicated.

Defence lawyers, Jovan Buturovic and Branko Stanic, said the tribunal grossly violated the law by not meet