A Contract With the Police Chief

Dr. Branimir Aleksandric, a professor of the Belgrade university medical school, decided to fight back. He was thrown out of the police college in Zemun where he taught criminal medicine just for telling the public that Predrag Starcevic died on December 24, 1996 of the effects of a beating. He has hired lawyer Milan Vulin and launched proceedings to clear up the whole thing.

On December 25, Aleksandric performed an autopsy on Starcevic as part of his regular duties at the court medical institute. Starcevic was killed by maddened participants in the SPS counter-rally in New Belgrade. A few days later he went to Mt. Kopaonik where he planned to stay for two weeks. During his absence, early in January, Belgrade daily Politika Ekspres reported that Starcevic didn’t die of the beating but of a heart attack. The daily quoted an autopsy report from the court medical institute; i.e. indirectly the doctor who performed the autopsy. Since Aleksandric was away no one could deny the report. When he returned from Kopaonik earlier than expected he called a press conference to say what the Starcevic really died of. Aleksandric is also the secretary of the medical crime board of the university medical school.

"The fact that Politika Ekspres said in its denial that the heart attack report came from the police ministry shows that the authorities intended that to be its lasting truth. Proof of that also lies in the fact that all the state electronic media carried the daily’s report in their prime time news and since I turned up to prevent them from manipulating my name and my honor I was thrown out of the police college."

Aleksandric and the Serbian internal affairs ministry signed a contract (signed by deputy minister police General Radovan Stojicic) on additional classes under which he was to teach criminal medical procedures at the college "until a permanent employee is hired for that post".

Aleksandric taught all his classes and was scheduled to hold exams on January 21. Just after his press conference, the dean of the police college, Colonel Momcilo Talijan told him that he doesn’t work there any more because "what you said about Starcevic suits the opposition and is being used for manipulation". Aleksandric showed up for the exams because he was informed in writing about them and was refused entry to the building.

Dr. Branimir Aleksandric was an SPS member up to the second round of local elections in Serbia on November 17.

"My lawyer and I feel that there is no legal basis for the way I was fired because everything I said at the January 6 press conference was in relation to my duties as a professor of the university medical school in the court medicine department. I spoke about Starcevic and the autopsy I performed in front of a commission and said nothing about my duties at the police college," he said.

Late in January the doctor wrote a number of letters to the dean, secretary, department chief at the police college as well as to the education ministry (to professor Milivoje Simonovic) and the internal affairs ministry (to General Stojicic). He asked the education ministry not to allow his exams to be taken in front of a three member commission which didn’t have the expertise to test students and which, under the college statute, can be called in only by the teacher if he can’t attend the exam which Aleksandric could.

In his letter to Stojicic, the doctor said: "I think this act by the dean has inflicted moral damage on the school and indirectly on the ministry and I am asking you to intervene to correct the mistakes made by the dean." No reply has been made to that letter.

People loyal to the ruling party and the university medical school criticized Aleksandric for a lack of ethics because he allowed TV and the press to publish photographs of Starcevic’s injuries (those photos were taken by Belgrade police photographers which is the usual practice with murders). "I asked them why they never reacted to my lack of ethics when I gave the media photos of dead Serbs with their eyes gouged out and heads bashed in and throats cut in Vukovar. I wasn’t unethical when I worked for the federal government’s genocide committee, examining 150 people who were lucky to be alive after going through Moslem and Croat camps. My documents are being prepared to be handed to Hague war crimes tribunal," he said. No one minded when the federal government sent him to Canada to lecture on ways of gathering evidence of crimes against Serbs in camps and of the results achieved by Yugoslav experts.

Although he has been threatened with a hearing in front of the ethics committee of the Serbian doctors’ society, perhaps things won’t go that far because he could raise other issues during that hearing. For example, how could there have been no extra medical staff on duty on a high risk day such as the day when Starcevic was brought to the Zemun hospital for an examination by a surgeon in training who had been left alone only two or three times before. Or how could staff at a top level medical institution such as the emergency center (where Starcevic was later taken) not recognize shock from internal bleeding for two hours. None of the doctors VREME talked to claimed Starcevic could have been saved in surgery but no one even made that attempt because the initial diagnosis was wrong. Maybe no one really wants to raise those issues because emergency center chief Zivorad Djordjevic is also a member of the SPS main board and the head of the party’s health board.