Crime and the Hague

A passenger on the bus from Banja Luka to Prijedor asked about the name of a village the bus was passing by. A young man wearing a colorful shirt answered that it was Kozarac, that Muslims used to live there and added: "You see how well the Serbs destroy."

"Many people must have been killed in battles when the place looks like this," the uninformed passenger said and continued asking stupid questions and his collocutor answered ironically: "I don't know, I wasn't here then and I haven't heard anything. I have problems with my ears."

This example of sudden amnesia and hearing problems is typical of the people from Prijedor. Everyone is ready to explain how the Kozara region suffered during World War Two, how in Knespolje and Dubica the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) recruited the first soldier of the Serbian nationality in 1964 because the Ustashi (mostly local Muslims and Croats) had killed all males "to the cradle," that the situation was no better in Prijedor and that in this war the Serbs were just faster than their neighbors. Of course, no one likes to mention that of the 49,000 Muslims in Prijedor and its vicinity, only two or three thousand have remained. They do not like to mention the camps near the town and when they have to, they call them detention (Trnopolje) or investigation centres (Omarska mine, "Keraterm" factory). The beginning of the trial of Dusko (not Dusan!) Tadic, the man accused of crimes against humanity and human rights in this war, was hardly mentioned by the local media.

Many people, however, are following the available information on the course of the trial and some are even willing to speak. Ljubomir Tadic from Banja Luka, the brother of Dusko Tadic, is angry with the local media because they did not let him deny the claims against his brother and explain how he saw the truth. He said he had spoken to CNN and many other international TV stations and that, after speaking to "Vreme," he would not speak to journalists again until the trial was over.

According to Ljubomir Tadic, his family is from Kozarac. His father Ostoja Tadic was a partisan, among the first to go to Kozara. Ostoja Tadic had a tempestuous war career. He was wounded several times; Muslims from Kozarac imprisoned him twice and he escaped twice; he survived even the Chetnik slaughter of the partisan field hospital in Josavac, when Dr. Mladen Stojanovic was killed. After the war, Tadic retired with the rank of a first-class captain of JNA. He stayed in Kozarac, got married and had four sons: Stojan, Mladen, Ljubomir and Dusko. Dusko was born in Kozarac in 1955, completed primary school in Kozarac and secondary school in Belgrade and is a TV mechanic.

"We were one of the few Serbian families in Kozarac, but we lived normally and had no problems. The neighbors did not disturb us. They sent their children for 'mejtef' (religious classes at the mosques), held their religious customs, but that was all. Our father was highly respected, although he aroused the anger of both Chetniks and Ustashi against whom he had fought in the war, but also of the new authorities when he pointed to some things. When he died in 1989, all the people of Kozarac came to his funeral. We are an athletic family, we were practically the founders of karate in Bosnian Krajina. I later had a karate-school in Banja Luka, Mladen in Germany and Dusko in Kozarac. He had as many as 90 students, mostly Muslims. In 1990, Dusko opened a cafe called "Nipon" which became very popular. Mostly young Muslims came, listened to pop music, there were no old drunkards, no folk music. We lived fine and did not look at who was who," Ljubomir Tadic said.

This was the time when troubles started throughout Bosnia including Kozarac.

"Shortly after the cafe was opened, in August 1990, Dusko got an anonymous letter declaring a holy war - jihad - on him and his family. It said they had three months to move out or they would be killed," Ljubomir Tadic said. "The letter was signed by Young Muslims - Party for Democratic Action (SDA) Kozarac, and something was written in Arabic, too. Dusko took the letter to the police station in Prijedor, but the police did not investigate and some neighbors criticized him for going to the police. They said the letter had been written by extremists who were a minority."

Ljubomir Tadic said his brother's cafe had been broken into on two occasions, a TV-set and video-recorder had been stolen but the Tadics stayed in Kozarac as long as they could:

"In early 1992, the Muslims were preparing for a clash, arming themselves and training, one of them accidentally got killed during the training in Besica field. I watched them pass by our house dressed in territorial defence uniforms with their coats-of-arms with lilies on them. They asked Dusko to join them to "defend Kozarac" and he answered he wouldn't fight against the Serbs and that he did not want to fight at all. Incidents broke out in the spring. JNA were retreating from Croatia and Muslims put up several machine-gun check-points, blocked the roads to Banja Luka, Prijedor and Mrakovica, searched and harassed the troops. There were more and more incidents, so in late April Dusko put his mother, wife, children and the Eastern Orthodox priest in his car (seven of them in a "Renault 4") and tried to get out. They were sent back from a check-point and one of the Bahonjics, a numerous extremist family, pointed his gun to them. They got out at another check-point. Dusko brought the family to my home and went back to Kozarac. I had a liquor store in the house next to his cafe. I left Kozarac on 21 May and Dusko left two days later, together with Trivo Reljic and his invalid son. While the Muslims were searching a car at the Kozarusa check-point, Trivo passed in his small car.

Ljubomir Tadic said his brother did not know what was going to happen. At any rate, Serbs attacked Kozarac a day later and took control of it after a four-day battle and enormous devastation. They sent the arrested Muslim soldiers and all other men capable of carrying a gun to "Keraterm" and Omarska (and some to Manjaca, south of Banja Luka) and women, children and the elderly to the detention center in Trnopolje. Similar things happened to the Muslims in the other nearby villages. After a group of 130 Muslims had failed to take hold of Prijedor on 29 May, when 19 Serbs were killed, the Prijedor Muslims were taken to camps. Some were killed right away. This was the beginning of what was later called ethnic cleansing.

Ljubomir Tadic claims that neither he nor his brother took part in the fighting. He explains that on 1 June he came to Kozarac to see the house which had been hit by two grenades and the demolished cafe. Dusko Tadic was mobilized on 16 June, when general mobilization was proclaimed.

"Dusko's best man arranged for him to be reserve police, not to be sent to the front-line. He controlled traffic at the Orlovci check-point in Prijedor and at the same time planned with his neighbors how to return to Kozarac and revive the village, to repair what could be repaired and put up Serbian refugees that were coming from the Bihac and Cazin regions. They received permission from the Municipality of Prijedor, so Dusko was transferred to the Kozarac police station. He was officially with the police, so that he wouldn't be sent to the front-line, but he actually worked as civil affairs commissioner. People were temporarily placed in the remaining houses. All the documents are with lawyer Mihail Vladimirov, Dusko's attorney in the Hague, and they show what Dusko did day in day out."

In the meantime, Dusko Tadic had a conflict with Prijedor power-wielders and, according to his brother, they started playing tricks. Tadic lost the cafe that had been leased to him and which he had repaired and redecorated. The cafe was taken by Jakov Maric, an officer of the Army of the Bosnian Serb Republic (VRS), who is still running it. In addition to this, Tadic's family was dislodged from the apartment in Prijedor and Dusko Tadic was sent to the battlefront near Gradacac, although no such order had come from the military headquarters: someone must have "set the game up for him". Upon his return from the battlefront in late 1993, Tadic went to Germany to his brother's place, where his wife was staying and trying to get a job as a nurse. In an interview published by the "Kozara Vjesnik" newspaper, Mira Tadic said that her husband had been informed against by some of Kozara and Prijedor Muslims, of whom there were many in Munich, and that he was arrested on 12 February 1994 and transported immediately to Karlsruhe where a prison had been established for people accused of war crimes. Some ten days later, due to fear and anonymous threats, Tadic's wife returned to Prijedor.

The rest of the story is well-known. A number of people witnessed against Dusko Tadic for terrible crimes: brutal murders, rape, harassment of prisoners in camps... Tadic was transferred back to Munich and in early 1995 was sent to the Hague.

Tadic was recently visited by his wife and daughters - the trip was paid for by the Yugoslav Airlines and their stay was taken care of by Serbs in Germany whom Ljubomir Tadic criticizes for having turned their backs on his brother after he had been arrested. Tadic feels well both mentally and physically, regularly does exercises and has lost 20 kilograms. He has told his brother that he could fight right away (he has black belt, day three, in karate).

In the meantime, the indictment against Tadic has been reduced although, according to his brother, it still contains 416 pages. The defence has also been reduced: neither of the four Serbian attorneys have remained. Milan Vujin who left about two weeks ago briefly told "Vreme" that there was a "conceptual disagreement" with Mihail Vladimirov. Tadic will not be charged for rape because the alleged victim wished not to testify. According to Ljubomir Tadic, his brother is accused of harassment of prisoners in the Omarska camp and four murders: Emir Karabasic, Jasko Hrnic, Ena Alic and a man whose family name is Harambasic.

"Witnesses of the prosecution at first claimed that my brother had forced Karabasic to bite of his own testicles," Ljubomir Tadic said. "Such an undertaking would be impossible even for a yogi. Besides, Emir was a friend of the family, he carried our father's coffin at the funeral, I have a video-tape with all of us at parties together. Dusko would never have done any harm to him, just like he did no harm to others. This campaign was initiated by a former police official in Banja Luka, Ismail Sokocevic, and members of the Sivac and Bahonjic families and some others. They are responsible for Kozarac, and Dusko was close at hand. Their witnesses are problematic, like Muharem Besic who was a professional thief before the war. Their testimonies are contradictory, not two of them tell the same story. We, however, have a video-tape of the testimony of Muradif Mrkalj, a teacher from Kozarac, who had been through Omarska and Trnopolje and said he had not seen Dusko there. Commander of the Omarska camp Zeljko Mejakic confirmed this (he, too, is on the Hague list). We have some 50 witnesses, although about 120 people had offered to testify, but we chose only the most reliable ones. I believe that, among other things, Dusko is a victim of an error. There was a man there who looked like him and there was also a Tadic, called Brk, who is not from Kozarac and who is no relative of ours. I know for certain that Dusko was never in Omarska and that he did none of what he is accused of. Neither he, nor any other member of our family."

Ahead of the trial Dusko Tadic threatened that he would go on hunger-strike if the court did not let the witnesses of the defence testify from Banja Luka, via satellite. The court accepted the request, but new problems arose. At the beginning of the trial, Tadic wrote a letter to Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic, asking for his help. The reason was to ensure undisturbed work of the defence. Apart from the limited budget, Tadic's attorney Mihail Vladimirov had complained that he had no access to the witnesses. This was confirmed by Ljubomir Tadic.

"Prijedor authorities will not let the defence speak to sentries at the Omarska camp, although some of them were willing to testify for Dusko. Authorities also made it difficult for the attorney to come to Prijedor. Now they have allowed everything except obtaining statements from the sentries, and that is the most important thing. Some sentries wanted to make statements, but changed their minds, probably under pressure. President Karadzic gave his permission and so did Interior Minister Kijac, but local authorities simply will not cooperate."

From Prijedor's aspect, this kind of behavior is logical. The testimonies might easily say: "Yes, things were done, but it was not Dusko who did them," which would automatically pose the question of responsibility for the things that were done, so the list of suspects might even be extended. Rumors say that an order came from Pale in 1992 to let foreign reporters visit the camps, so photographs were sent from throughout the world. This may be understood as the headquarters' showdown with the disobedient Krajina. The fact that of the 57 defendants on the Hague list (46 Serbs), as many as 34 are from Prijedor and its vicinity (mostly commanders, sentries and visitors to the Omarska and "Keraterm" camps) is understood as an international plot against the Serbs. "There were camps everywhere, but reporters were allowed to get only into these ones," is the general opinion in Prijedor. "If something did happen and if Dusko is guilty, they should send him back here to be tried by us."

Most people maintain that this is a political trial, that it is a farce and that media should be used for more important things: the problem of the 30,000-50,000 refugees who now make up almost one-half of Prijedor's population; revival of economy (the Ljubija mine which, with its 5,000 employees, was the source of income for 60 percent of the municipality, the cellulose factory); the problem of poverty - it is estimated that several thousand people live on one meal a day and the question is what they eat. We have seen this fact confirmed: a clean and decently dressed middle-aged man at a bus stop bends down to pick up a sizable cigarette-end that someone has thrown away and smokes it.

The youth seem to have different problems: exams, enrolling into schools, love... In the evening, young people crowd in local cafes and listen to loud rock'n'roll and dance music. Surprisingly, there is not much "turbo-folk" music to be heard. Posters show that the election campaign has begun, although the date of the elections has not yet been established. The most likely to win are, of course, the ruling Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), followed by the socialists and radicals...

The rain keeps pouring all week-end, washing off all that can be washed. It falls on the roofs, on broken windows of the former Muslim shops in central Prijedor, on the football players of Rudar-Prijedor and Banja Luka Borac, on their surprisingly numerous fans, on the fields where mosques used to stand, on cars, wretched carts, tired horses and dung on the streets. And on the dead.