Arrest in Tucepi

The hotel Alga in Tucepi was almost full on Tuesday, October 24; almost 300 delegates to the annual Helsinki Citizens' Assembly congress were there for the night after spending a day in buses from Tuzla where the meeting was held. They were getting ready to continue their journey when a strange group of men appeared in the lobby: two uniformed police carrying a stretcher with a bearded man on it, two plain clothes police, two Helsinki assembly activists and Belgrade lawyer Nikola Barovic. It turned out that the SZUP (The Croatian constitutional protection service) had just arrested Radovan Jovic, a participant in the congress. That arrest somehow coincided with a formal announcement by the Croatian police that "a group of 13 Serb spies had been arrested". The previous night, Jovic had a rheumatic attack and was almost immobilized; nothing surprising since the group spent 62 hours in buses to Tuzla and another 24 from Tuzla to Tucepi which is hard on anyone with a bad back. An ambulance appeared soon and Jovic was put into it and driven away under police escort. The two SZUP officers in plain clothes did not identify themselves but the local uniformed police confirmed their status which gave lawyer Barovic cause for concern: this would not be the first time that someone just disappeared.

Jovic's companions - all activists of various human rights organizations with experience in cases like these - reacted quickly and efficiently: they phoned their organizations to raise the alarm as well as the US ambassador in Zagreb Peter Galbraith (at whose suggestion Jovic was invited to Tuzla), the German ambassador and foreign correspondents in Croatia. The Croatian police (courteous and cooperative up to that moment) suddenly changed its attitude: the two buses carrying congress participants and journalists from Yugoslavia and Zagreb were put under heavy police escort. Up to that moment the buses had a police car in front of them to clear the way, from that moment everyone was banned from getting off the buses and they were escorted to the Hungarian border at top speed; the convoy stopped only twice in deserted locations where no phones were available. All the congress participants had Croatian transit visas valid for at least two more days but that meant nothing any more: their rights were limited to that of prisoners under escort and even less - the police were joined in their abuse by the Czech owner of the bus company, which almost resulted in violence.

Who is Radovan Jovic? He was born in 1953, his wife and children have been in Belgrade for the past two years. His sister is in Zagreb (she was arrested that same morning at 6:00 and held for interrogation until late that night). He graduated law school and was a district court judge in Glina. Milorad Pupovac said since early 1993 when he came to the first informal Serb-Croat talks in Austria: "(Jovic) He urged peace, a political agreement, he was against extremism and all forms of non-democratic behavior." Because of that, especially because of his participation in the gathering of Croatian and Serb intellectuals in Zagreb in November 1994 (as the only Krajina Serb representative), his home in Glina was bombed. He also took part in three UN conferences on Serb-Croat relations organized by Boutros-Ghali and Akashi".

The tall, calm man has a history of clashes with the Martic authorities in the Krajina: he was close to the late Dmitar Obradovic, mayor of Vrginmost who was killed in undisclosed circumstances in 1992; early in 1995 he was suspended and relieved of his duties as a judge; he refused to be drafted and spent a month in Martic's jail after which he was taken to the front but was released at the intervention of ambassador Galbraith and left for Belgrade. He spent July and August this year in the US as a guest of the administration which drew a hysterical reaction from the Croatian press since Jovic was a member of the delegation of Croatian human rights organizations. Jovic's fate is similar to Veljko Dzakula: they were both arrested by Martic and the Croatian police, Jovic even visited Dzakula and Dusan Ecimovic in jail in 1993. On the road to Tuzla he was calm and reserved; he wasn't impressed by his arrest he just lay there on the stretcher, smiling and smoking.

Two hours after Jovic's arrest, assistant police minister Smiljan Reljic said criminal charges had been filed against 15 people for spying for the Republic of Serb Krajina (RSK). The operation was named Zenit although the Croatian press called it Labrador 2. Fourteen people were arrested (12 Serbs and two Croats) and one is at large. Jovic's name is on that list. The 15 are charged with gathering intelligence through intelligence centers in "Knin, Belgrade and Topusko" under the auspices of the Yugoslav Army intelligence service and centers in Trieste, Kopar and Innsbrook. Their cover was alleged to be private companies owned by Serbs. The homes and offices of all the arrested were ransacked but the police didn't find much. The evidence shown at the press conference was composed of private letters, address books, photos, some weapons, a Serb flag and two RSK license plates. Since the list is made up of mainly former police and army officers, the weapons are considered a normal thing, the rest are things that can be found in any home. The press conference came four days after the explosion of a car bomb in Rijeka and five days prior to general elections; Reljic blamed Serbs for the explosion; a large number of Serbs were arrested for interrogation which was assessed as more pressure on Croatia's few remaining Serbs.

There are two possible reasons why Jovic was arrested as he was. He went in and out of Croatia without problems in 1994; this time he entered Croatia twice and left once without problems; a list of FRY congress participants was sent to the Croatian police a month earlier; they were all checked through SZUP computers. Why was Jovic arrested halfway from Tuzla to the Hungarian border? Two of the seven buses in the convoy were held up at the border crossing at Metkovic for over nine hours (from Monday evening to Tuesday morning) and the explanation were problems with visas for delegates from Azerbaidjan. Jovic entered Croatia twice (at the Barc crossing from Hungary and Metkovic from Bosnia) and left it once (Metkovic) and wasn't stopped although information on everyone in the buses was sent to Zagreb (the hours spent waiting for permission to enter the country was explained by the police as waiting for permission from Zagreb).

There are two possible explanations: either this was a political decision to arrest someone besides the 14 suspects (someone who has a political biography as a Serb who advocated peaceful, political solutions so that if he's a spy imagine what the others are like); or the SZUP got more information about his activities in the three days he was in Tuzla. The second version is highly unlikely if Smiljan Reljic is to be believed when he said the police "action was long and detailed". Helsinki congress participants all agreed that this was a political decision just in time for elections. They said the Croatian authorities wanted to show that no Serb can be reliable to Croats who think loyal Serbs exist.

It's an operative fact that the Croatian authorities seized a huge amount of documents and archives from the RSK during operation Storm. Those documents could lead to all kinds of conclusions but that takes time and a lot of professional analysts. The Croatian services had neither of those two. Most probably this was a pre-election scandal which could later turn out to be a dud but only once it no longer matters. The accompanying message is that the SZUP knows everything about everyone or that it can make that claim convincingly. In the pre-election campaign that is no little thing.