Harsh Words

Around 100 people showed up at Slobodan Miljkovic's funeral on Monday, August 10th, to bury and mourn the man known as Boba to his friends and Lugar to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Miljkovic was buried in military fashion. Men wearing uniforms of the Bosnian Serb Army carried his coffin and held a flag of the Ilidza brigade. "Boba fought for a better future that won't come as long as those who sent him to war are in power", Miljkovic's brother said as the coffin was laid down.
However, most of Kragujevac's inhabitants remember Slobodan Miljkovic as a local bully and drunkard rather than a hero. Miljkovic had been convicted of a number of criminal acts, ranging from disorderly conduct to extortion. His demise very much reflected his lifestyle. He was killed in a local bar on Friday, August 7th, after getting drunk and a subsequent brawl. Shortly before he was killed, Miljkovic was having a conversation with the bar owner, Dragisa Rakovic, and one Miodrag Brankovic, also known as Mile the Frenchman. A Serbian police officer, Bransilav Lukovic, walked into the bar with his girlfriend after both of them had had a few drinks in her own bar down the street. It appears that Lukovic's girlfriend had a dispute with Miljkovic over a certain sum of money, as the latter allegedly tried to extort cash from her.

After a short argument, a fight broke out in which Lukovic came off worst as he was outnumbered. Miljkovic and his companions overpowered him, threw him out of the bar and pushed him into his car. Lukovic, as he told the investigating officers, first wanted to go to hospital to be treated for injuries, but changed his mind when he realized that his pride had been hurt more than his body. He went back, took his gun out of the glove compartment and shot dead Miljkovic, Brankovic and Rankovic. He wounded another three people when he fired at his foes.

"I lost it. It had to be this way", he told his colleagues who arrested him.

Miljkovic's death would have remained one of many incidents of its kind, if he hadn't been a war crimes suspect. On July 21st 1995, the International War Crimes Tribunal pressed charges against Miljkovic and five other people for violating the Geneva Convention and crimes against humanity. According to the indictment, Miljkovic, the wartime commander of a unit called "The Grey Wolves", ordered the execution of 16 Moslem and Croat civilians in a village near Bosanski Samac on May 6th 1992. Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, accused Miljkovic of shooting two prisoners and instructing the execution of several others. The Tribunal asked the Yugoslav authorities several times to extradite Miljkovic, but the Yugoslav government courteously ignored the demand. The indictment stated that Miljkovic's nickname was Lugar, but the name was actually a code for his unit based in the village near Bosanski Samac.

The Hague Tribunal's charges did not make Miljkovic as famous as he had hoped. In spite of the fact that he was one of the five Yugoslav citizens on the Tribunal's wanted list, he was overshadowed by the likes of Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Veselin Sljivancanin. In an interview to the weekly Vreme in the spring of 1996, Miljkovic claimed he was innocent and said he actually went to propose marriage to his girlfriend on May 6th 1992, adding she could corroborate his story. He said that his life was in danger and that the police had framed him in an effort to get rid of him. He came to the interview wearing a bulletproof vest. He claimed he knew a lot about the involvement of Serbia's ranking politicians and policemen in the Bosnian war and said that he had been locked up and beaten a number of times because of this. As a sample of the "pile of evidence" he allegedly had, Miljkovic offered photocopied documents of foreign mercenaries he claimed to have captured and a piece of paper with no seal or signature instructing him to secure some facilities in Bosanski Samac.

Miljkovic also said he was willing to tell his story to foreign media in return for a large amount of money. Basically, his story was so flimsy that it was never actually published by the weekly Vreme.

Tatomir Lekovic, Miljkovic's attorney, is convinced that his client was assassinated for political reasons. "Miljkovic's assassination was masterminded by the state security service", Lekovic told the Kragujevac daily Glas Javnosti. Lekovic claims that his client had a police ID he received from one Frank Simonovic, a ranking state security officer. The identification document allegedly included the signature of Zoran Sokolovic, the former Interior Minister. "I will fulfill my duty and do what Miljkovic told me I should do in case of his death. I will pass on the evidence to the Hague Tribunal. He gave the documents proving that what I am saying is true, and there is enough evidence to send Slobodan Milosevic straight to The Hague", Lekovic said. However, Miljkovic's lawyer did not offer a sample of the above-mentioned evidence to the weekly Vreme, such as the number of Miljkovic's ID.  It is very questionable whether Lekovic's story can be taken unreservedly. In spite of the fact that the man who killed Miljkovic is actually a member of the state security service, it is hard to shake off the impression that the official version is a lot more consistent and convincing than Lekovic's. It would be very unusual for the state security service to entrust the execution of such a crucial witness to one of its office clerks rather than a field agent or, which is often the case, a criminal who could later hardly be connected to the "company". Apart from all that, the police and the state authorities had plenty of time to take away from Miljkovic and Lekovic all the incriminating evidence, if there ever was any. If Miljkovic really had been as dangerous a witness as he claimed, it is highly unlikely that he would have been allowed to roam around with incriminating evidence for three years and gloat about his war "heroics" and connections with the police.

Nevertheless, it would be unfair to say that Miljkovic would have been an irrelevant witness in The Hague. It is no longer a secret that the police were heavily involved in sending volunteers to Bosnia and that a lot of those volunteers, like one Slobodan Miljkovic, had a criminal record. What is more, many of them went to battlefronts in Bosnia straight from their prison cells. It is quite possible that some detail from Miljkovic's story could have revealed the role of those who gave him and his likes arms and permission to decide about life and death. Unfortunately, the bullet from Lukovic's revolver ended the story in the most abrupt way imaginable.