Heroine – 600 Kilograms

How this came to pass will have to come out into the open eventually.  In any case, last week a police unit raided the Commercial Bank in Ive Lole Ribara Street, in downtown Belgrade, at a location directly across the street from where journalist and newspaper man Slavko Curuvija was killed two years ago.  The police unit came equipped with a TV camera and – we hope – a search warrant for opening a rented safe.  600 kilograms of pure heroine (supposedly 93 percent pure, so-called No. 4) were found neatly packaged in a safe deposit box, in fact an armored room.  A small amount of various narcotics was also found in the Municipal Police Building, but it is probable that their location is not under dispute.  Criminal technologists ascertained the quantity and quality of the appropriated substances, after which they were destroyed in the presence of the authorities and the public.  The street value of the destroyed narcotics on our streets is around 65 million German marks, or at least twice as much by European street prices.

TECHNIQUES AND THE LAW:  What were the 600 kilograms of heroine doing in a safe deposit box signed out in the name of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia?  What is the origin of the heroine?  Why was it not registered in court and why was it not held by judicial authorities until its destruction before a committee?  If it was held secretly, what purpose was it intended for?  Was the heroine being held for special “sinister” operations by elements in the State Security which had gone out of control, or was it kept as a last resource for rainy days, when everyone would have to depart?  These questions are the minimal starting point for ever investigation; answers to them could define, if not put an end to the fate of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia.  Here’s why:

First of all, very strict regulations must be followed whenever a narcotic substance, even the smallest amount, is appropriated by customs officials or by the police in regard to weighing, identification as an illegal substance and following a court order based on material evidence, it must be destroyed before a committee.  During the court procedure such substances must be under the control of the courts which are the only ones permitted to handle them until they are destroyed.  As a rule, the courts entrust the keeping of such substances to the police for technical reasons, but they keep very extensive information regarding these substances and officially “entrust” them to the police.

For many years now there are rumors in the Belgrade subculture of drug addicts that the majority of narcotics come from circles close to the police: well established gangsters, untouchable dealers with connections “high up” and similar newfangled money men.  The technique is the following: either the police does not draft a report on a drug bust, but makes a deal with dealers “for profit” (more rare and sporadic); or an exchange is made so that the courts destroy powdered sugar or starch instead of cocaine or heroin.  A deputy public prosecutor confirmed for VREME that no control of discrete samples is made during the process of destruction of such substances.  That alone can be done easily enough: a crime technologist is brought in with his bag and test substances, and analysis is done on the spot.  A far bigger problem than small theft is how large drug busts are treated.  Here we come to this scandal in the safe deposit box at the Commercial Bank.  Namely, VREME was told by a former high official of the State Security Service that the better part of this heroine comes from two drug busts made on the Bulgarian border in 1997.  A Bulgarian truck transporting peppers was discovered to be carrying 300 kilograms of heroin, and a Slovenian truck was also discovered to be carrying 250 kilograms of heroine.  The former authorities were very proud of these two successful drug busts, which is only logical.  However, after this all was forgotten.  It turned out that the customs authorities – for reasons that Mr. Mihalj Kertes will certainly explain to investigators – handed the confiscated heroin to the State Security Service, instead of to the courts, just as also happened in the case of the truck used in the assassination attempt against Vuk Draskovic.  A former official of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia remembers that a certain amount of narcotics was kept in the safe of the destroyed building of the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs, but he could not tell VREME what happened to it because he was occupied with other matters at the time.  Otherwise he doubts that State Security dabbled in “such dangerous stupidities.”  When it was pointed out to him that heroin is a very sellable commodity, both on the street as well as in certain international transactions, he told us that this is true, but that the Service did not operate that way at the time.  “How that stuff came to be there and what they intended to do with it is something you will have to ask them,” he told us.

Investigators can easily get the registration form for the safety deposit box at the Commercial Bank and can establish the identity of the person who signed for the box in the name of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia.  This signatory could easily be an administrative official who does not even know – nor should know, for that matter – what is kept in the safe deposit box.  Far more interesting is the individual (or individuals) who has the key to the safety deposit box and has access to it.  This is something that the police will have to establish with appropriate bank officials.  The individual who holds the key to the safety deposit box does not necessarily have to know what is contained in the packages stored there, but he can certainly point the police to who provided him with those packages for deposit, with a clear lead existing.  Bank regulations otherwise prohibit the holding of weapons, ammunition, explosives, flammable substances, poisons and corrosives in safety deposit boxes.  It is highly unlikely that the Commercial Bank even dared ask the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia what it is keeping in its safety deposit box.  

The next step in the investigation is not as simple.  It must be established who handed over the heroin confiscated by customs officials to State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia; who at the State Security Service accepted it and then kept it secret from the justice system; who ordered it to be deposited in a bank safe, why and with what purpose; why was the heroin not handed over to the courts according to regulation.  Beside this, other questions are also posing themselves: is this the first such case (it appears that it isn’t); if it isn’t, what were previous such cases used for and where did the confiscated narcotics finally end up – on the streets, among our children; abroad, among their children; with arms traffickers, money launderers or dealers of stolen electronics?  The problem with narcotics is wherever they go, they always end up killing someone’s children.  These questions are legitimate; the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia no longer has the right to the presumption of innocence: after everything we came to know about it in the past thirteen years, its innocence is gone once and for all.

Silence can no longer be resorted to as a method of defense: 600 kilograms of heroin in the illegal possession of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia is just as big a scandal and as compromising for the State Security as the assassination on the Ibar Highway and other assassinations for which justified suspicion exists with regard to its involvement.  The very existence of those 600 kilograms of heroin in the possession of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia is basis for suspicion of criminal wrongdoing in smuggling narcotics with the intention of trafficking.  All those who toke part in this and knew about it, but did not report it, as well as those who had to know but didn’t because they are incapable of doing their jobs, must be criminally prosecuted and sentenced to maximum sentences because of the extent of the danger they pose for society at large.  General Rade Markovic is welcome to talk endlessly how he “did not know”; that is no excuse: it was his job to know as the Chief of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia.  If he knew how to hold the reigns of power, how to accept his salary and gratis property, how to enjoy all the perks of being the Chief of State Security – well, then he all had to know what his men were doing.  Ineptitude is the worst criminal offense.

When we asked our source about how far and how deep the reform of the State Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia will go, he told us with melancholy: “My assessment is that it will go back to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party.”  Therefore, Radmilo Bogdanovic and his Chief, Zoran Jankovic should prepare themselves; Vlajko Stojiljkovic and Jovica Stanisic (Zoran Sokolovic is beyond the reach of the courts); and all those who held those positions in the meantime.  And their boss, of course.