Guilty

The Danilovgrad First-Degree Court sentenced Vlatko Radojevic from Spuz to four months in jail for causing general alert and Luka Ivanovic from the same village to one month in jail for illegal possession of explosives. Radojevic turned himself in and admitted he had planted the explosive on the balcony of a house in Spuz in which two refugee Moslem families from Bosnia - twelve people in all - were living. Following Radojevic's addmission, charges were dropped against suspect Bozina Veskovic, whose alleged harassment prompted the dismissal of five top policemen in the Podgorica Security Center.

"Vlatko Radojevic was convicted on the basis of his admission", Chairman of the Danilovgrad Court Ratko Cupic told Vreme. "Bozina Veskovic had of his own free will, without the use of force, admitted he had committed the same crime, and the District Attorney dropped charges against him," said Cupic.

The five dismissed policemen are now suing the state of Montenegro for losing their jobs and claim they had not harassed any of the suspects.

District

According to the draft Serbian 1996 Budget, 800,000 dinars are earmarked to cover the expenses of the Republican President (including paper, gas, telephone bill, heating, etc). The South Banat District is planned to be allotted 850,000 dinars, the Kosovo District 821,000 dinars and the Zlatibor District as much as 938,000 dinars. The disparity can be explained in several ways. Those who like the President will say he is a thrifty man. His opponents, however, will claim that those working for him are doing nothing and should therefore receive no money. Or did the authors of the budget anticipate that Serbia will next year be reduced to a District?

Nicknames

The quiz question is: Who is hiding behind the nicknames "Grey Fox", "Untouchable", "Elliot Ness": and "White Samurai"? The answer to the diligent readers of state and para-state press is: only one person, Marko Nicovic. In addition to the above nicknames, Nicovic says he is a lawyer, that he headed a Belgrade police department, that he is the author of a book on drugs and a book on karate, the Chairman of the Yugoslav Karate Association, a senior official of international karate organizations, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Belgrade publisher Narodna Knjiga, a man with ideas on how to deal with local crime and, as he himself added in his interview to Brcin's Borba last week - a representative of a Japanese firm in south-east Europe, flying diplomat, and so on...

Nicovic says he achieved the Renaissance dream by his in-depth insight into karate and many-year relentless training. One of the secrets of achieving such spiritual enlightenment is having "one hundred people run over the candidate's stomach about twenty times, until your stomach is no longer up to anything and hurts another month", Nicovic revealed to Borba's readers. One really needs a good stomach to swallow the above-mentioned interview, a stomach as good if not better than Nicovic needs for his achievements. Nicovic, an eminent member of the Yugoslav United Left and probably a renown expert on Japan, accompanied Dr. Mirjana Markovic on her recent trip to Japan.

Fakes

We first found out that there were false public transport controllers roaming Belgrade, fining passengers caught without their tickets. Then they warned us not to believe the fake street-cleaners when they came to our doors on New Year's Day to wish us a happy New Year expecting a few dimes. Meanwhile, false bill collectors went around charging for public utilities and a false church calendar appeared on the market. Last week, a fake customs official was arrest - he had been selling SONY TV sets to citizens in building lobbies, charging them 500 German marks and escaping with the money under the pretext of going to get the TV set. Several false policemen were this week arrested in Belgrade- they were "controlling the traffic" in the uniform of a reserve policeman and fining the drivers. Finally, fake grave-diggers appeared on the stage, offering the grieving families maintenance of their loved one's graves and assessing the value of their services by the depth of the grief and the mourners' ability to pay. What will the legal state of Serbia do, however, if it turns out that fake judges are trying the frauds? Or that the firms are headed by fake managers, who pay the racket to fake criminals? Or, God forbid, that the citizens are led by fake leaders?

The Government's Double Standards

The member of parliament, Pal Sandor, has addressed an open letter to the Prime Minister of Serbia, Mirko Marjanovic. Sandor warns the Prime Minister that, at this moment, a forced tax payment is underway in many villages and cities of Vojvodina and Serbia in which those that have not settled their obligations are having their means of production confiscated: tractors, trailers, plows. "The tax officers", writes Sandor, "have shown special diligence in villages populated by national minorities (Hungarians, Romanians) which most certainly notes political pressure and disturbance of the population. I must especially emphasize that all those with whom I came into contact stressed that, due to the impoverishment of agriculture and the disparity of the prices, they are unable to pay tax, especially since they have not received compensation from the government for their agricultural products... How are such double standards possible in a judiciary state? Is the Government solely interested in tax collections while ignoring payments to the farmers? The farmers have come out with a proposal: if the price of wheat is 1 Din/kg now, while it was purchased from them for 0.28 Din/kg, the price difference should be paid out to them which will easily enable them to pay their taxes.

Bulatovic Abolishes 82 Prisoners

Momir Bulatovic, President of Montenegro, has decided to open up the cells of the political prisoners: he pardoned 82 people "up for criminal prosecution, amongst them 50 people who have committed criminal activities out of political motives and beliefs."

Twenty-one Muslims, members of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) were freed (convicted in March of this year in Bijelo Polje to a total of 87 years in prison under the charges that they wished to form an independent state of Sandzak out of a part of Montenegro).

Sixteen people from Cetinje were freed from further prosecution, indicted for assault on President Bulatovic. A Montenegrin poet, Jevrem Brkovic, is allowed to return to Montenegro, who had been under investigation four years ago on account of a letter of apology to the Muslims and Croats, and had as a result immigrated to Croatia. Slavko Pustic was also released, editor of the Serbian National Revival Bulletin from Bijelo Polje, against whom charges were brought up by the prosecutor on account of an anti-Semitic article and for stirring up inter-religious and inter-national hatred. Milika Ceko Dacevic is also free, a Serbian fighter and radical from Pljevlje, the alpha and omega of the tyrannical regime of the Serbian patriots in that city, whose target have always been the Muslims from Pljevlje.

The identity of the other abolished people is for now unknown, but the cabinet of President Bulatovic informed VREME that they are people who had committed minor offenses (traffic accidents and similar). Amongst the abolished there aren't any journalists who had been tried for injury to Montenegrin standing and similar.

Jevrem Brkovic's speedy reaction came from Zagreb, refusing Bulatovic's compassion. "It would be normal", says Brkic, "for President Bulatovic to ask abolition of the Montenegrin people and of me, since he has brought Montenegro beneath the line of human and national dignity. I shall return to Montenegro when its independence and sovereignty will be the greatest guarantees for my safety and dignity", concludes Brkovic.

"As the defense lawyer of most of the sentenced in the Bijelo Polje case, I wish to express my satisfaction regarding the fact that these people are now free. In a state which wishes to call itself judicial, they wouldn't have even been tried. The case was commenced for purely political reasons, accompanied by unimaginable torture, psychological and physical, a media campaign and frightful pressures on judicial bodies. It was terminated for political reasons as well. I must say, as the defense lawyer and as a person, that I am convinced that these people were put in jail while innocent and that I had expected that the Supreme Court of Montenegro as, so to say, the highest judicial body in our state, would accept our appeal and at least annul the verdict of the Court from Bijelo Polje and return the case for new proceedings. I cannot, of course, claim, yet I believe that opinions from, so to say, judicial circles had influenced the President to make such a decision", says Vladan Djordjevic, attorney.