Serbian Archipelago of Graves

Confirming the investigative work by VREME staff, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia confirmed the fact that at least one of the pits in which the victims from the refrigerated truck which was dropped into the river on March 20/21 and taken out of the Danube on April 1999 is located on the land between Belgrade’s suburbs of Zemun and Batajnica.  Now called the recreational-athletic center “May 13”, in the past decade this complex got a bad reputation for serving as the training ground for special antiterrorist units (SAJ) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  Also confirmed is the information already published in VREME that in the Village of Petrovo, another training ground for the SAJ, and a training location for Special Operations Units (JSO) near Kladovo, also have buried remains of victims from the conflicts in Kosovo and Metohija.

As serious as his position requires, the Serbian Minister of Police Dusan Mihajlovic suggested that in the past several days information has been gathered about the existence of several similar burial cites, if it is possible to use this term in referring to pits dug beneath highways.  The Minister did not confirm or deny speculations that several hundred to a thousand victims could be at issue here.  This was done by Dragan Velimirovic, owner of the Criminal Review of Timok, a magazine which was the first to publish testimony given by a diver who was hired during the lifting of the refrigerator truck from the Danube River, as well as by the public prosecutor in Negotin, Miroslav Srzentic.  Both of them stated that the location of the pit near the Village of Petrovo was disclosed by a man who drove the corpses from Kosovo, and Velimirovic stated that this individual is a former policeman who drove around a thousand corpses from Kosovo and Metohija from April to June of 1999 during the period of so-called “cleanup”.  In video footage which was shown to journalists on June 13, the editing was not done precisely enough so that Regional Judge Goran Cavlina, who issued the court order for exhumations near Batajnica, is heard saying that the location was discovered by a construction worker who “disclosed the place because the same person…”

MYSTIFICATION:  It does not take much intelligence to figure out that Dusan Mihajlovic, Serbian Minister of Police, Sreten Lukic, Chief of State Security who formed a committee on May 7 for establishing all relevant facts related to “the discovery of the truck which contained the unidentified corpses and on the basis of these findings to take appropriate legal steps”, as well as Captain Dragan Karleusa, Deputy Chief of the Directorate for Battling Organized Crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia, are in possession of facts ascertained from participants in the cover-up operation.  Disan Mihajlovic dodged reporters’ curiosity by stating that the public does not need to know who informed the police because “there were many unwilling participants in this case, who were working for state wages and are now their main source of information.”  Instead of this, the public should take an interest in who ordered, organized and declared the cover-up of these crimes a state secret.  Captain Karleusa responded to this question as early as May 25, revealing the fact that the operation was ordered by Slobodan Milosevic in March of 1999 at a meeting which was attended by the Minister of Police at that time, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, by the Chief of the RJB, General Vlastimir Djordjevic, Radomir Markvovic, Chief of State Security at the time, and by others.  “On that occasion General Djordjevic stated the problem of cleaning up the territory of Kosovo and Metohija.  In connection with this, Milosevic ordered Stojiljkovic to take measures so that all traces which could lead to evidence of committed crimes should be removed.”

Others who attended that meeting have still not been identified.  Instead of that, Minister Dusan Mihajlovic directed reporters to the Yugoslav Army under whose command were all the units in Kosovo and Metohija at the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.  After the press conference, held on June 13 by Minister Mihajlovic, several papers published a fax of an order of placing “police units” under army control and the cleanup of the territory.  This fax was signed by Generals Nebojsa Pavkovic and Vladimir Lazarevic, Commander of the Third Army and the Pristina Corps at the time, both of who occupy high positions in the Yugoslav Army today.

The term clean-up sounded accusing at one point, and the order for a cleanup had the ring of genocide, despite the fact that the term is an international legal term for the understanding between warring sides that human and animal corpses will be removed, as well as biological weapons and unexploded ammunition following the end of a conflict.  The objective of this is to avoid disease and additional human casualties, and this obligation has been around since 1864 and the Geneva Convention.  In this sense, General Vladimir Lazarevic’s order issued in April of 1999 could be used sooner in his defense than anything else: in this order it is also indicated that investigation must be conducted in all cases where suspicion exists that the dead are victims of war crimes, with jurisdiction of investigating officers being specified, if army or police actions, or those of other units lead to this.

WHOSE MOTHER ARE YOU CALLING A WHORE:  The fax which was published in the Politika daily has an interesting handwritten note in the upper right hand corner of this document: “Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs – to everyone – to the chief – on the basis of the fifth point, action must be taken on the order of the Headquarters” (dated May 1, 1999, with the signature illegible).  The fifth point (based on paragraphs 8, 11 and 17 of the FRY federal Law on Defense) of Genral Lazarevic’s order for clean-up is as follows: “Units which are not part of the Yugoslav Army and which take part in battle, as well as civilian and court officials must submit investigative reports, in the shortest possible time, to the Military Court with the Command of the Pristina Corps, with the highest degree of confidentiality.”  It seems that someone in the “Headquarters” decided that the clean-up operation requires additional confidentiality.

The list of those who received the order includes only one “headquarters” that is to say the Headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Kosovo and Metohija, whose coordinator and chief at the time was Sreten Lukic, who is presently the Chief of State Security and who was recently promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General on the annual Police Day, as well as the founder of the committee for investigating the case of the refrigerator truck, as well as a man who publicly stated that he had no knowledge of the removal of corpses.  It appears that he is taken on his word, by contrast with Pavkovic and Lazarevic who shrug their shoulders when confronted with the comment that the police had to answer to the army.  In this sense testimony by the former Chief of the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army, General Momcilo Perisic, who claims that during his time as Chief of the Supreme Headquarters, the police had free reign over Kosovo and Metohija, which is also one of the reasons he came into conflict with Slobodan Milosevic.  Today, as vice-president of the Serbian Government, he puts his signature to indictments against Nebojsa Pavkovic who “issued orders to the police.”

The nausea caused by the police and army activities is certainly not diminished by the publication of facts regarding the criminal trial taking place in Nis against 193 members of the Yugoslav Army.  The police “retorted” with indictments issued during the NATO bombing, but by contrast with the army, the police stopped at the mere mention of numbers, without indicating the reason, the progress and the result of trials.  On Tuesday, June 19, Dusan Mihajlovic decided to inform our public from Vienna about mass graves which are nowhere close to known locations, but “somewhere completely different in Serbia” – as if what is at issue is a children’s game of hide and seek.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE DEAD:  When this issue of VREME goes to press, a team of experts put together by Belgrade’s Institute for Court Medicine with international forensics experts and members of the International Committee for Missing Persons will inspect the remains of the first twenty corpses, as well as of the ten corpses buried in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica.  The first bones were located six feed underneath the ground, and by Tuesday, when the rain once again began to fall, the remains of 11 men, women, and one child were also discovered.  Because the burial sight is fairly small, members of the investigative team who were joined by students from the archeology department in the meantime, suppose that unless a well or a deep pit is at issue, the number of buried is smaller from the published figures of 83 bodies and three human heads.  At the same time, the behavior of a small number of policemen involved, Captain Dragan Karleusa and the investigating judge Goran Cavlina, and the general atmosphere during the investigation, indicate that they are in possession of knowledge of what remains to be “discovered.”

According to VREME’s sources, the first exhumed remains are in very bad shape, with nearly no clothes and flesh, and the bones are mixed up in a way which will prevent forensic specialists from discovering the cause of death.  If these bodies are from the refrigerator trucks, given that the exposure to water and transportation through Serbia contributed to their deterioration, it is supposed that bodies deeper in the ground will be better preserved than those at the top of the pit, with crushed bones and dismembered extremities.  The archeological approach to the exhumation will certainly not speed up the exhumation.  In this entire nauseating story, there is no place for hurry: Serbia does not have enough qualified specialists in order to investigate three mass graves at the same time.

While waiting for the results of the exhumations and autopsies from closed and open pits, investigating court and police officials could undertake the discovery of participats in the very long chain of concealing the crime.  From the legal perspective, the concealing of the identity of participants in these crimes with expressions like “others” and “they worked for state wages” is tantamount perpetuating the crime.