The Trial to Ceko Dacevic, a terrorist and a MP

The start of the court trial eliminated the dilemma over whether it is possible to try Milika Ceko Dacevic, arrested for terrorism in the summer of 1992 who, in the meantime, became a member of the Yugoslav Assembly's Chamber of Citizens as a candidate of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS).

According to the prosecutor, the immunity of a parliament member, acquired later on, could not protect him from the offenses committed earlier on. Dacevic's offenses are no obstacle, because the law is clear: "The right to vote and to be elected member of parliament belongs to every Yugoslav citizen who turns 18, who is capable of working and who had a place of living on the territory of the Republic for at least six months before the elections."

The case of Milika Ceko Dacevic, member of the federal parliament, is to be resolved by the High court in Bijelo Polje, after an insight into the evidence and a consideration of the charges for "the criminal act of terrorism" brought by senior public prosecutor Miladin Radovic and which refer to blocking all the access routes to Pljevlja with the use of automatic weapons, not allowing people and vehicles to pass, seizing the post office, the building of the communal Assembly, the Social Accounting service, the hospital, gasoline station, the radio-relay, a bakery and blocking the Security Center". Mr.Dacevic is the first offender charged with "violent behavior, assaulting a policeman and being in the group that prevented a policeman from doing his duty".

Apart from him, also indicted are Branko Vujasevic (38), Jovica Laketic and Ljubomir Odovic (25), while the second offender Tihomir Vujadinovic (31) is still on the run. The Montenegrin state media have published the announcement by the Serbian Radical Party calling on people to attend this court trial, the result of which was the application of unheard-of security measures around the building of the court in Bijelo polje. Three buses were ensured for the transport those from Pljevlja who wanted to go, but the interest was not great; the buses left via Prijepolje, but they soon returned without the passengers. It is still being guessed in Pljevlja who stopped and returned them, but in Bijelo Polje all the roads leading to the court were closed.

As the defendants' attorneys there appeared 9 lawyers including Mr.Nikola Cavic, a lawyer and a priest, the president of the Serbian Radical Party in the Serbian Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who defended Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan before the court in Zagreb. The defendants plea not guilty to all the charges, trying to prove that this is a staged trial, primarily of a political nature, and that "patriotism is not terrorism". Judging by their statements, they were only curious observers of the turbulent events in Pljevlja and the investigation against them was not correct from the very beginning, so that Mr.Dacevic claimed that "the defendants were promised in jail to be relieved of charges if they admitted that he organized the blockade of Pljevlja". "I didn't even know about that blockade", stressed Mr.Dacevic, "because, on that day, I was held at the police station for questioning, and if I had intended to overthrow the authorities, I wouldn't have tried to do it in rotten Pljevlja, since I know where this should be done."

The charges are that Mr.Dacevic drove to the Security Center a car on whose top was a large amount of explosives, that he was accompanied by persons armed with automatic rifles and machine-guns, that he threatened to have 360 armed people and that he would take over Pljevlja, destroy the bridge over the Tara, shoot all aircraft of the Yugoslav People's Army and so on. Dacevic denied all this saying that his role in the events in Pljevlja was the same as that of other citizens. The charges were confirmed by Vukota Scekic, the head of the Security Center, who was visibly sweating, but when asked by the lawyer about evidence corroborating the claims that Dacevic was responsible for the putting up of barricades, he could say nothing concrete. Scekic claimed that, on the critical day, Dacevic was not arrested, but that he was there for an informative agreement, only that he himself did not want to leave the police station so that information about him being arrested spread and turned into the already known unrest.

It is obvious that no agreement will be reached, before judge Zoran Smolovic's court council, on who fired in Pljevlja, who made the Muslims in that town flee in panic and who is responsible for dozens of sabotage operations which destroyed stores exclusively belonging to Muslims. Those who expect the untying of the Pljevlja knot are not satisfied with the course of the trial, primarily because they know that the "chain" of responsibility for all that is very long and that not even the Pljevlja authorities, the police, and even the Yugoslav army and the Montenegrin leadership are without responsibility. For this reason, there is suspicion about a possible compromise which could result in the hiding of those responsible and, finally, in the conclusion that nothing, in fact, happened in Pljevlja. Vukota Scekic tried to deny the claims that the Montenegrin authorities armed the people in Pljevlja, by saying that it was Ceko who "armed the people with weapons from Foca and Cajnic". Mr.Scekic could not explain how Dusko Kornjaca, the commander of the town of Cajnice in Bosnia-Herzegovina, found himself with soldiers of the Serbian Republic at the time of the turbulent events in Pljevlja: "Perhaps the man came with good intentions to see what was going on in Pljevlja. However, the question is, how did Scekic, as the head of the Security Center, allow Dusko Kornjaca to come at all, under the protection of the armed guards who secured the building of the Pljevlja communal assembly, at a time when the Montenegrin authorities made it clear that there can be no movements by any kind of armed formations except the army and police in Montenegro. The question of how, on the critical day, Kornjaca found himself in Pljevlja with soldiers of the Serbian Republic, when units of the Yugoslav Army were at the border crossing, could perhaps be answered by some of those authorized in the Yugoslav and Montenegrin army.

Is someone trying to be protected from the clarification of the situation in Pljevlja which has led to over 30 percent of the Muslims fleeing from that region? The answer to this question is becoming increasingly tangible, not just because of certain statements by those in charge of ensuring peace and security in Montenegro, but also because of the constant mention of the cooperation between the police, units of the Yugoslav People's Army and Ceko Dacevic's volunteers. This cooperation flourished at mutual satisfaction until they came to a crossroads from which they could no longer go the same way. Mr.Dacevic, obviously has a lot to say about all this because he constantly keeps speaking about cooperation with the top people in the Montenegrin police, which explains the restraint of the witnesses.

Regardless of all this, Mr.Ceko Dacevic has become a member of the federal parliament and a very interesting person for the media. This forty year old man was born in the village of Oblatno near Niksic, in a mixed "partizan-chetnik" family, which moved to Pljevlja in the sixties. He finished catering school in Kotor, he became a cook, and he worked as head of the kitchen at the Clinical center in Zvezdara. Now, according to his own confession, he is a warrior by profession. He was an instructor of volunteers in the vicinity of Vukovar at the time when "football was still played there "and, according to him, he liberated the barracks there, he fought in Gospic, Bijeljina, Kupres, Cajnic, Gorazde, Foca, he was wounded several times, his brother was killed on the battlefront, and he decided not to shave and cut his hair until all the Serbs lived in one state. He acknowledges no borders between the Serbs, he does not adore the Muslims because he "does not like anything that is Turkish", and "they, in fact, do not exist, they are only our black sheep". That is how he spoke before he was arrested and he would add that the "propagation of the Muslims must be stopped so that Kosovo would not be repeated". In his village of Odzak, near Pljevlja, with a majority Muslim population, there are few houses on which it doesn't say "move". When he speaks about the war, he says that no real warrior will admit how many people he had killed and when asked whether his army had slaughtered Muslims he said: "No, but every now and then a Muslim floats down the Drina." He publicly bragged that, at one time, Montenegrin prime minister Milo Djukanovic had understanding for his war merits, that president Momir Bulatovic kissed him on the hand and that his patriotism was highly appreciated. It is up to the court in Bijelo Polje to assess how he got in conflict with the law and the state, and also whether he will soon appear in the federal parliament as a parliament member, elected by the people of Pljevlja and Montenegro.