Bodies from the Freezer Truck Buried on Location Known as 'May 13'

During the night between March 20th and 21st, three days before NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, a freezer truck, escorted by two other vehicles, was sunk into the Danube, about 18 km from the village of Tekija.

Two weeks later, on April 5th, after a report on a big floating coffer put forward by local fishermen, police have discovered that it was in fact a freezer truck. It was determined that it contained human corpses of men, women and children. At least 200 local inhabitants, curious passengers and officials witnessed the discovery.

The chief-of-staff of SUP (Secretariat of Internal Affairs) in Bor, Caslav Golubovic, ordered the termination of exposing the freezer truck and informed the then chief of public security department (RJB) of MUP (Ministry of Internal Affairs) of Serbia, Vlastimir Djordjevic. After certain consultations Djordjevic ordered the following: ‘Put the sight under protection, close down all information and pull out the freezer truck.’ The next day (April 7th), he added: ‘Remove the bodies, and have them prepared for transport – the autopsy and burial will take place elsewhere.’ The case was proclaimed as highly classified.

However, in the night between April 7th and 8th, the workers of the company ‘Komunalac’ and police officers did not manage to transfer all the corpses of victims. The job was done the next day, the truck with the bodies set off towards Belgrade, while the empty freezer truck was driven to the village of Petrovo Selo, where it was destroyed in explosion. Officially, there were no more traces of the truck containing the bodies, as well as there was no more the ‘case’. The official silence lasted two years and one month, until May 8th 2001, when the county prosecutor in Negotin, Miroslav Srzentic expressed the intention of the prosecutor’s office to take over the measures ‘in favour of clarifying the case of the freezer truck, taken out of the Danube nearby Tekija, on April 6th 1999, which contained the bodies of presumably around 50 victims’.

CHRONOLOGY: On May 3rd, the MUP of Serbia ‘realised’ the decisions (brought on April 14th) about having the hitherto chief of RJB (Public Police Department), Vlastimir Djordjevic retired and having the former chief of Police managing department and the special forces unit, Obrad Stevanovic, transferred to the Police Academy. A few days later, MUP denies that such decisions were related to the ‘freezer truck affair’.

On May 7th, the RJB chief-of staff, Sreten Lukic, formed the working team with a task to determine all relevant facts about the finding of the truck containing unidentified dead bodies, and to act in accordance with suitable legal measure.

The media silence on the subject finishes on May 18th. On that day, Vice Prime Minister of Serbia Zarko Korac gives a statement in Geneva: ‘The Government is working hard to expand the local charges against the ousted FRY President Slobodan Milosevic towards including war crimes.’ The day after, his colleague in the Government, Minister of Justice Vladan Batic, demanded from the Supreme Court in Serbia and the acting director of the public prosecutor’s office to ‘make all possible effort to clarify the ‘mysterious case’ of corpses found in the freezer truck, sunk into the Danube’, and that ‘whoever is responsible must be answer for his transgressions, no matter what office he may now occupy’.

Six days later, on May 24th, Serbian Minister of Police Dusan Mihajlovic explained that it was Sreten Lukic – since June 1998, until the end of NATO air campaign in 1999, he was acting as co-ordinator of the MUP seat for Serbia and Kosovo and Metohija – who was appointed chief of staff of RJB ‘because his dossier was clear, as well as that he cannot be responsible for crimes committed in Kosovo, as those were commanded from above.’ Some time before, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic gave an interview to Radio B92 in which he stated that the members of his government were well aware of the fact that Sreten Lukic used to be chief of police in Kosovo and Metohija at the time of war and prior to it, and that it is likely that his name appear among the suspects. However: ‘It would be far more relevant if he were, for instance, involved in one of the drug, oil or weapon dealers’ chains, or if he owned shops and perfume stores in Belgrade, etc.’

MAJOR SUSPECT AND OTHERS: On the formerly celebrated Day of Youth, May 25th, the deputy chief of staff of the Department of Criminal Police within MUP of Serbia, Dragan Karleusa, revealed the name of the most responsible for removing the traces of the crime: Slobodan Milosevic. It was he who proclaimed the freezer truck case as highly classified by the end of March 1999, when he issued an order that all evidence pertaining to crimes in Kosovo and Metohija must be utterly removed. ‘The facts discovered by the working team’, says Karleusa, ‘indicate that in March 1999, Slobodan Milosevic held an official meeting in his cabinet. Among the present, there were: Vlajko Stojiljkovic, the former Minister of Internal Affairs, general Vlastmir Djodjevic, the former RJB chief of staff, Radomir Markovic, the former state security chief of staff, and others. On that occasion, Milosevic ordered Stojiljkovic to take all necessary measures of removing the traces that might indicate some crimes.’

Dusan Mihajlovic announced that by the end of the investigation against Slobodan Milosevic, another charge would be brought against him – for removing the evidence of war crimes, but he failed to answer the question as to whether he would be accused of ordering the execution of war crimes or not. We received no answer on the part of Sreten Lukic when he was asked if he had been acquainted with Milosevic’s order: ‘The working team continues the investigation, the public will be regularly informed about everything at the time.’

On June 3rd, the new Police Day, the RJB chief of staff Sreten Lukic was promoted – by the decision of the President of Serbia, Milan Milutinovic, after a proposal of Dusan Mihajlovic.

ACCOUNT WITH DETAILS: On Wednesday, May 30th, Dusan Mihajlovic informed the deputies in the Parliament of Serbia – motivated by an accusation on the part of the Radicals that the whole case was fabricated – that 86 bodies were hauled out of the Danube and that police have come up with ‘many indications that, unfortunately, such cases are likely to recur elsewhere’.

On June 2nd, Dragan Karleusa went public on RTS (Radio Television of Serbia): ‘We know where the corpses are buried; in fact we presume that those corpses are buried at a particular place. We are already preparing for the exhumation. We found out that there were photos taken at the crime scene, but we were not told so at the start. Later we got hold of those photographs. The public will be regularly informed about any advancement concerning our investigation.’ On the same day, Dusan Mihajlovic said to Radio Belgrade: ‘We know where the bodies were buried and where the traces were removed. We began the exhumation of those bodies… It appears that those mass graves contain more bodies than have originally hidden in the freezer truck pulled out of the Danube.’

On the new Police Day, Radio B92 broadcasts that the bodies from the freezer truck were interred on the territory of Belgrade, in Zemun. The B92 sources confirmed that the exhumation was in progress and that those 83 bodies had been recovered, as well as another 3 human heads. ‘The bodies were mainly of women, children and elderly people, but there are also several in the KLA (the Kosovo Liberation Army) uniforms’ – this was told to a B92 journalist, with the confirmation that the bodies did show evidence of torture and that the police possess information about the involvement of the former state leadership, the police leadership and even the Yugoslav Army (VJ) in this crime of evidence removal.

On Monday, June 4th, it was reported that the exhumation and autopsy were being carried out by an expert team within the Institute of Court Medicine in the vicinity of Belgrade, but it had been briefly interrupted due to rainy weather. Names of the judges of the District Court of Belgrade, who ordered the exhumation and the autopsy, were not publicised. The VJ Headquarters ‘explicitly denied’ any claims of its involvement in the evidence removal related to the freezer truck case. The HQ claimed that police forces had not been under the command of VJ during the bombardment in 1999, and that, therefore, it possessed no data that pertains to the ‘freezer truck case’. The HQ demanded from MUP of Serbia to submit some evidence of the alleged VJ involvement in that affair.

On June 5th, Minister of Police Dusan Mihajlovic repeated that the ‘freezer truck case’ was not a unique case of the kind, and that the investigators were already in search of two other locations. No further details were revealed, with the explanation that the investigation is in the hands of the independent judiciary, and so is the public information concerning its course. The exhumation was interrupted this week due to the ‘absence of judiciary organs’. The police did not give a statement, which would put blame for the evidence removal on the VJ leadership, said Mihajlovic.

President of the Democratic Alternative and of the Co-ordinating Body for the South of Serbia, and Vice-President of the Serbian Government, Nebojsa Covic, agreed on the possibility that the ‘freezer truck case’ was not the only case of the kind, i.e. that there must be at least another mass grave in Serbia, given the evidence of at least two cases of soil recuperation (in Kosovo and Metohija) and that the bodies from the freezer truck were the result of the second case. This statement coincides with the suspicion of those who allegedly witnessed the sinking of the freezer truck and the eyewitnesses on the spot where it emerged, the name of the operation of elimination (‘Depth 2’) and the recent fears of happening upon some similar cases in the near future.

TIMING AND ASSUMPTIONS: Connoisseurs of the new Serbian political scene are currently in no position to estimate how and why there is no control of information outflow on the part of the DOS authorities. It is obvious that frequent repeating of the information on the ‘freezer truck case’ – not the diversity of it – increases as the donor conference is approaching, and, at least until the day before yesterday, with the expectation of consensus between DOS (the Democratic Opposition of Serbia) and SNP (the Socialist National Party) about the adoption of the Law on Co-operation with the Hague Tribunal. Eighteen days have past since the forming of the working team and until the discovery of Slobodan Milosevic’s order to Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Vlastimir Djordjevic, Rade Markovic and others to remove evidence in 1999. Another eight days later – it was corroborated that the police knew about the site of at least one mass grave.

WHAT WAS (NOT) SAID: During the past month, the story of an attempt of removing evidence of crimes, connected with the sinking of the freezer truck full of dead bodies in March 1999, has almost reached completion. It was suggested that the victims originated from Pec, that the majority if them were women, children and the elderly, while there were some uniformed KLA soldiers. The freezer truck was destroyed at the site of a MUP special units base nearby Petrovo Selo, the bodies were transported to Belgrade, more precisely to the municipality of Zemun. Last Tuesday’s Blic daily published the claims that the site of the mass grave was in Krnjaca, near Politika’s printing press. The police confirmed the number of 86 cadavers, and an anonymous source of Radio B92 added another three skulls to it. Slobodan Milosevic is directly associated with the operation of removing the evidence of committed crimes.

It was not specified who were the ‘others’ present at the meeting held by the former FRY President two years ago, how many official or para-official individuals took part in removing the crime evidence, who runs the investigation, and finally, where is the site of the mass grave with the bodies from the freezer truck.

WHERE IS THE MASS GRAVE: On Monday afternoon, some media discreetly withdrew the information, according to which the territory of Zemun was narrowed to the size of some military-police ‘estate’ as a site of the latest burial of the bodies from the freezer truck. The latest research conducted by VREME journalist team last week almost certainly points to the fact that the grave is located some fifteen minutes by car from central Zemun, on the right bank of the old Novi Sad motorway.

A decayed concrete arch used to stand for an entrance to the agricultural estate known as ‘May 13’ – it is not difficult to deduce who might have managed it. Until some twenty years ago, this location used to be a place for military exercise of the then Yugoslav Army reserve soldiers. Today, only the area closer to the motorway is occupied by the military. According to some unproven statements, this site was also one of the centres of the special anti-terrorist forces of the MUP of Serbia, most probably those involved in the clashes with protestors in December 1997, after the fraud on local elections. Other VREME sources are able to verify that the preparation for exhumation began on Saturday, June 2nd, and that the operation was subsequently called off on June 4th. The reason for calling off the exhumation was not due to rainy weather, but due to the arrival of ‘Hague investigators’, which are supposed to show up here by the end of the week. It is so far not possible to find out whether they are coming on their own initiative or not. The first option seems more plausible.

WHAT REMAINS UNCLEAR: Exhumation and autopsy – the duration of which, depending on certain circumstances, may last several weeks – will only substantiate what the police already knows, point out towards some more concrete causes of death, and enable a possible DNA identification.

It is obvious that the police possess practically all needed evidence about all relevant facts regarding the ‘freezer truck’ case: photographs, video recordings, testimonies and reports. It is also interesting that the reports of the working team proved not to be so meticulous. The truck with the bodies was halted on the Novi Sad motorway and handed to the unidentified officials. The report does not specify further reactions or actions of the truck driver or the escorting vehicle driver, if there was any. The fact that the grave is situated in a ‘police yard’ suggests the doubt in possibility or readiness of the investigative organs of the ‘new Serbian police’ to reveal the information about who conducted the final phase in the attempt of removing the evidence of crime.

The eyewitnesses of the sinking the freezer truck into the river or those who observed its pulling out of the river and the discovery of its terrifying contents, its transfer, destruction and ‘passing’ to other officials, and finally the burial of the victims, are quite numerous, as well as the number of those who took part in the operation ‘Depth 2’. None of the participants at the former President’s official meeting gave any statement about the connection of their names with the removal of the crime traces. Slobodan Milosevic and Radomir Markovic are in prison, Vlajko Stojiljkovic and Vlastimir Djordjevic are refusing to any give statements for the public, and there are no public declarations on the part of anyone from the network of those in command or those who executed crimes of the kind. Sreten Lukic first avoided/delayed his answer to the direct question, only to say later that, as a co-ordinator of the MUP seat for Kosovo and Metohija, he knew nothing about the ‘freezer truck case’. According to his statement, the police was inferior to the military during the NATO air intervention – that statement has no connection with the freezer truck near Tekija, because it has been sunk in the Danube before the bombardment’. The play of avoiding responsibility from the military to the police – including the simultaneous message by Dusan Mihajlovic addressed to the press that they should arrive at their own conclusions about the involvement of the military leadership ‘if they examine who was taking part in armed conflicts in Kosovo’ – is just another sorry tale about the ‘Serbian’ disorderliness and cover-ups in investigating serious crimes.