Imperfect Crime

Whoever labored under the illusion that it is possible to forget the consequences of the war in Kosovo has been severely disabused in recent days.  For now an unknown number of corpses, almost certainly victims of war crimes, have surfaced in the Danube, in a part of Serbia that is on the other side from where they were probably killed.  An article published in a provincial newspaper regarding this event, two years after the fact, probably initiated one of the most unpleasant affairs to face the present government to date.  The corpses taken from the refrigerated truck near Kladovo, once again raised the issue not only of crimes committed in Kosovo, but a no less morbid question of attempts to cover up those crimes.  The problem is that the people directed to investigate this case, by the very nature of their professions, must have been involved in it from the very beginning.

SCUBA-DIVER’S TALE:  The event which was talked about in the town of Kladovo for over two years would probably never have come to light had it not been for Dragan Vitomirovic, retired officer with the State Security who decided to take up journalism and to write for his local newspaper “Timok Crime Review.”  On five pages of that publication Vitomirovic wrote an article based on the testimony of Zivojin Djordjevic, a professional scuba-diver from Kladovo.  Djordjevic described in detail how on April 6, 1999, during the NATO bombing, he was hired in extricating a refrigerator truck from the bottom of the Danube, near a place called Tekija, close to Kladovo.  When the water level of the river dropped the refrigerator truck was observed by fishermen who notified the local police.  The police assumed that a vehicle accident was at issue and informed the local prosecutor’s office.  Djordjevic’s task was to attach a crane hook to the truck so that it could be lifted out of the river.  However, it soon turned out that there was nothing routine about this job.

The first thing that was observed on the first attempt to lift the refrigerator truck was that it is a lot heavier that it should be, given its size.  Besides this, the refrigerator door was shut with a thick chain and lock, which is fairly unusual when transportation of meat is in question.  When finally the truck was slowly lifted out of the water with a bigger crane that was borrowed from the Djerdap Dam on the Danube, what followed was a sight that no one who was there will ever forget.  “We lifted the back of the truck and let the water come out, in order to be able to lift the truck in its entirety,” Djordjevic explained and said that the chain and lock were cut at that point, and the refrigerator was opened.  “Corspes began to come out of the refrigerator truck.  Many corpses of women, children and the elderly,” as printed in the “Timok Crime Review.”  “Some of the women had Muslim attire, while some children and the elderly were naked.  A sight of horror.  Bosko, a crime technician with the Kladovo Police Department, who was constantly with me, and I tried to stuff the corpses back into the refrigerator, because some passers-by already began to gather.  I held Bosko so that he could take a photo of the interior of the refrigerator truck.  At that point we quickly closed the refrigerator truck door and went to inform the local Chief of Police.”  According to Drjordjevic, the refrigerator truck was also weighed down with concrete blocks, and judging by the state of the corpses, was driven into the Danube, a little above Tekije, several days earlier.

COVER-UP:  After the refrigerator truck with the load of horror was finally lifted onto dry land, a private undertaker from Kladovo was called in to take the bodies to the morgue, but difficulties arose when the unfortunate undertaker showed up with only four coffins, not having been informed of the number of his potential customers.  All these difficulties forced Miroslav Srzentic, Deputy Regional Prosecutor, to register the beginning of the investigation starting next day.  However, the investigation had never been conducted because it had been stopped from Belgrade.  Srzentic, who has become the Regional Prosecutor since that time, claims that his chief at the time, Krsta Majstorovic, informed him on April 7 that “there wont be any investigation” because “nothing happened” and that everything concerning the refrigerator truck must be considered a state secret.  Srzentic stated that this order hit him hard, but that he did not dare to disobey it in view of the state of war.  Supposedly, a new refrigerator truck arrived from Belgrade that same day, heading out toward Donji Milanovac after it got its load.  The “Timok Crime Review” reports that the first refrigerator truck was a green Mercedes Truck with registration plates from Pec and with the name of its owner, an Albanian, written on its doors.  This truck was towed empty to Petrovo Selo, where a camp of the Yugoslav Special Anti-Terrorist Units is located, and that it was blown up there with 30 kilograms of explosive.  All that remained from it was the part of a fender which flew into the nearby plum orchard.

After Belgrade’s press took up Vitimirovic’s article, other characters in this story came up with further details.  For instance, it is noted that General Vlastimir Djordjevic Rodja, Chief of State Security at the time, had been notified immediately of this case, as well as that photographs taken by Crime Technician Bosko had been initially sent to Bor, and than to Belgrade.  Vitomirovic’s main witness, scuba-diver Zivadin Djordjevic, was the only one who retracted some of the details of his story.  In an interview Djordjevic gave for YU info television and B92, he stated that there were only thirty corpses, that he does not remember the Pec license plates, and also denied having said that some of the women wore traditional Muslim attire.  Vitomirovic, on the other hand, stated that he noted Djordjevic’s testimony very precisely, and that he even stated the telephone number of the truck owner (029 22 007).  He considers Djordjevic’s change of story the result of fear and threats, because he claims that he himself had been threatened for publishing this story.  He was threatened by people who presented themselves as members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and they advised him that it is in the national interest for all investigation of this story to be stopped.

When an account is taken of all details, it becomes clear that the operative investigating team formed by the Chief of State Security, Sreten Lukic, on May 8, wont be able to do much in the field.  The corpses had been taken to God-knows-where.  The fender which flew into the plum orchard during the explosion could not be found by anyone, with Bosko’s photographs also going missing.  All that remains is the testimony of witnesses which, beside certain discrepancies mach all too well in order to be struck out.  In any case, no one denies that the corpses were of children, women and the elderly, and given the circumstances, it is fairly clear that what is at issue are the victims of war crimes committed in Kosovo.

BURNING TWICE:  Here this sinister story gets an even more sinister twist, because it appears that during the war in Kosovo there were systematic and very organized attempts to conceal the extent of war crimes and to remove all evidence.  The American network, American Radio Networks, ran a well documented report at the end of last year showing that a large number of Albanian corpses were burnt in the large furnace of the Trepca Mine.  In this report two members of the Yugoslav Special Operations Unit were interviewed and stated that they participated directly in this.  According to one of these participants, who presents himself as Branko, corpses were placed on assembly lines which carry coal to the furnace and were burnt at a temperature which is several hundred degrees higher than that used in cremation.  The idea was to destroy everything that could be used as evidence, even microscopic evidence of DNA.  “There was no question of concealing the evidence, but only of destroying it completely,” Branko states, “so that it appears as if it never happened.”  It is interesting that Branko stated that the transportation of corpses was done in “small refrigerated trucks usually used for transporting milk and ice cream, with twenty to thirty corpses to a load,” he explained.

Michael Montgomery, the journalist who made this report, said that he heard that some of these “loads” from Kosovo were directed to Serbia proper and destroyed in other ways, but that he did not manage to find direct evidence.  The confirmation that this story might not be entirely unfounded came from an unexpected source: from the Military Court in Nis.  During the trial of several members of the Yugoslav Army for the murder of an elderly Albanian couple in Kosovo – otherwise the only such trial to be held since the war – it became known that one of the accused, reservist Nebojsa Dimitrijevic, was a member of the “unit for burning corpses”, while one of the witnesses was presented as a member of a “unit for re-burning”.  Reacting to an article from the London Observer in which the existence of these units is tied to the destruction of evidence of war crimes, the Information Department of the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army claimed that this is sensationalist disinformation, because “because such units exist all over the world for sanitary reasons.”  However, this does not appear convincing, even from afar (why re-burning?), and more complete explanation is expected from the Yugoslav Army.

PERFUME:  If we return to the refrigerator truck in the Danube, it becomes clear that key information rerding what happened can be found in the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs.  Someone there gave an order for a refrigerated truck to be sent out from Belgrade in order to collect corpses and that someone knows where they were sent and what happened to them.  If this was not personally done by General Vlastimir Djordjevic Rodja, then he would have to know who issued the order.  Rodja is no longer the Chief of State Security, but is still in uniform in the South of Serbia, near Bujanovac.  However, Rodja could not stop investigative activity which was initiated by Srzentic, because this could only be done at that time by Dragisa Krsmanovic, the Chief Public Prosecutor for Serbia at the time, and now an assistant in the Prosecutor’s Office.  General Sreten Lukic, Rodja’s successor in the State Security, would also have to know something about who the murdered people in the refrigerated truck were, given that he was the Coordinator of all MUP Units in Kosovo at the time.  Given that the order for an operative group to be formed came directly from Lukic, it will be interesting to see whether he will be on the list of witnesses.

For now there is more than enough reason to be skeptical toward the presence of political will for bringing light to this case.  If it turns out that the horrible load in the Danube was part of a larger operation of destroying corpses, a full investigation of this could shake some very powerful people in the State Security, as well as their new political sponsors.  Florence Artman, Spokeswoman for the International War Crimes Tribunal stated for VREME that the Hague is “extremely curious about the refrigerated truck case.”  “We are impatient for establishing cooperation with the Tribunal which was promised by your government, so that we can take part in that investigation,” Artman told us, pointing out that the indictment against Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo “has not been completed yet.”  Sources close to the Tribunal investigators claim that “strong indications exist regarding systematic coverups of evidence” and that “they are already working on this,” but are refusing to give details for now.

Covering up evidence is also a crime, not only in the Hague but in our courts also, where efforts are being made these days to regain long lost credibility.  However, what is in the interest of the public and of justice does not have to necessarily be in the interest of politicians who are still refraining from shaking this boat.  How else can we explain the sour and mainly late reaction by the highest state officials.  All of them, with the exception of Goran Vesic, who publicly stated his fear that “there will be more cases like this,” are giving the impression that they would like to sweep this case under the rug.  Justice Minister, Vladan Batic stated that “he has no intention of going back retroactively to some truck,” as if, God forbid, he had already been in it.  Federal Minister of Police, Zoran Zivkovic, mostly commented on the case in the context of missing Serbs in Kosovo, while the Serbian Police Minister Dusan Mihajlovic stated five days after all leading papers in Belgrade carried this report, stated that “he is not managing to read newspapers these days.”  Probably the most original comment was made by Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic who responded to the question of whether the possibility exists that General Lukic was involved in the refrigerated truck case and in war crimes, by saying that the priority of his government is to conduct a war against organized crime.  Not attempting to prove Lukic’s innocence, Djindjic stated that “far more dangerous than war criminals are those who hold gambling houses and perfume boutiques.”

Perhaps the Prime Minister could spare a perfume boutique or two: a lot of perfume will be needed to cover up the smell from the refrigerated truck.