Witness and Avenger

The sudden appearance of Dusko Petrovic, former Bosnia war volunteer from Despotovac and self-proclaimed witness of the abduction of 19 passengers (18 Moslems) from the Belgrade-Bar train at Strpci station on February 27, 1993 and the killing of seven (he later learned they were all killed) gave just a moment’s hope that light will be shed on the crime and that the perpetrators and people who issued the orders will be revealed.

"Milan Lukic and his men kidnapped and killed the people on the train," Petrovic said. There was talk of that even before Milan Lukic, commander of the Avenger para-military group, arrested and released several times, was arrested early in 1994 and turned over to an investigative judge in the Belgrade district court who launched an investigation on April 6 on suspicion that he committed the abduction of 19 people. The investigation heard testimony by carefully picked witnesses who either knew nothing or forgot what happened right after the kidnapping. Two train guards, policeman from Uzice Miroslav Ranic and Zoran Udovcic and Strpci station manager Slobodan Igacic were sure they had never seen Milan Lukic when shown his photo. Investigators did not insist on questioning Ranic who identified Lukic as one of the abductors days after the kidnapping. The two policemen said they had standing orders to allow Bosnian Serb military formations onto the train to search for deserters and army personnel and added that they thought it was a routine search. Indicatively, the investigators did not interrogate Dino Polimac, Suhra Dautovic, Samija Zupcevic whose husband Halil was abducted and many other people who were on that train. Those people were never called in to say who and what they saw when the train stopped in Strpci although it never stopped there before. Strpci station is owned by the Yugoslav railways and is on Serbian territory. Understandably, the judge didn’t try to find and summon "two blacks and nine Serbs" who the regime press claimed were also abducted. That stupid lie was a sign that the Strpci incident had to be marginalized as something that doesn’t happen only to Moslems but to Serbs and Africans as well.

Records of the investigation at the Humanitarian Right Fund, whose staff investigated the abduction, said: "Records show that the whole thing was controlled. All information that could lead to someone in the authorities was closed. Witnesses, including the train driver and station manager, could only have led to the perpetrator but even that line was stopped. They were pressured, they changed their statements to say that they didn’t recognize anyone although they said earlier they knew the abductors."

The investigation against Lukic ended 20 days after his arrest with the conclusion that there is no proof of his guilt and he was released but the public prosecutor filed an appeal with the Serbian supreme court to make things seem more convincing. And that was not the end: the police met Lukic when he was released from jail and took him to jail in Belgrade. His arrival there coincided with a request for his extradition submitted to the Belgrade district court by the court in Pale for a robbery. That request provided no details. And that was the climax of the comedy. The whole thing was certainly not dreamed up at judiciary level alone. Lukic had to be thrown across the Drina so that the Bosnian Serbs would have to deal with him. Extradition was the solution and the procedure began on April 28, 1994. A judge set his detention time at 30 days and in the meantime the Serbian supreme court confirmed his release. The extradition procedure was completed and on May 24 Lukic was handed to the RS and a hero’s welcome in Visegrad.

Criminal law experts felt that the legal basis for his extradition wasn’t there. Primarily because the RS was not internationally recognized and never recognized the FRY. Rules of international crime fighting aid are valid only among recognized states which have established relations and treaties, experts said. Another problem was the fact that RS legal acts don’t show that the RS and FRY are separate international subjects. And finally, Serbian judicial bodies handed Lukic over under a request from the RS justice ministry but experts said the Serbian judiciary had to invoke the criminal code which says extradition requests must come through the foreign ministry. In any case Lukic’s citizenship was under dispute since neither the RS or FRY had adopted citizenship laws. Then federal justice minister Zoran Stojanovic was asked whether the extradition was legal and said on June 1, 1994 that he wasn’t competent to answer since he wasn’t familiar with the decision. And he didn’t resign as the Center For Anti-War Action said he should. The new federal government decided at its first, March 3, session to condemn the abduction and investigate the case. Since then the families of the abductees have heard many false promises including "We’ll move heaven and earth to find them" from Slobodan Milosevic and other officials who said the criminals will be found and tried.

The reactions by the authorities of the FRY, Serbia, Montenegro and the RS lead to the conclusion that they wanted people to believe that the Strpci case won’t ever be solved. There is no basis to believe that para-military troops will ever be brought to trial primarily because of who trained, armed, clothed and fed, commanded and brainwashed people like Lukic. The fears of the top levels of the authorities are understandable.

ANTRFILE

Milan Lukic, commander of the Avenger para-military group, was arrested in the RS several times for various crimes. International human rights organizations have testimony that indicates that Lukic’s group committed a large number of crimes against the civilian population in Visegrad. They said he, Jovan Planojevic and a certain Momir killed 22 Moslem civilians on June 18, 1992 in Visegrad after torturing them. The organizations said Lukic was also involved in burning 60 more civilians who were first promised safe conduct to the village of Orlovo.