From IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, NO. 74,10.9.99

BOSNIAN SERB DAILY BREAKS TABOOS

A Republika Srpska newspaper has for the first time reported in-depth on crimes committed by Serbs during the Bosnian war.

Branko Peric*

On 21 August 1992 Bosnian Serbs murdered some 200 of their Muslim countrymen in a drive to create an ethnically pure Republika Srpska. A little over seven years later, this crime made the news.

In a sign of Republika Srpska's changing political environment, Banja Luka daily Nezavisne Novine devoted its front page and two inside pages to the killing, which took place about 25 km north-east of the central Bosnian town of Travnik.

In the process, the newspaper, which is Republika Srpska's best-selling daily and means The Independent, published the first detailed account of mass crimes committed by Serbs against Bosnian Muslims to appear in Republika Srpska and asked why no one has been brought to account.

According to the newspaper article, the victims were survivors of the notorious Serb-run Omarska camp who had just been released and were being transported in a convoy of buses and trucks to the Muslim-held town of Travnik, as well as some of the remaining Muslim residents of the western Bosnian town of Prijedor.

During the journey, more than 200 men were separated from the rest, stripped of their remaining belongings and packed into two buses which were driven to the Koricani cliffs on Mount Vlasic, the execution site.

"We were ordered to kneel on the edge of the cliff. Horrible fire was heard, and I felt a sharp pain in the shoulder. I was falling into the abyss," Medo Sivac, who was 18 at the time, told Nezavisne Novine. He and six other survivors survivors spent the next two days lying wounded at the bottom of the cliff, while their Serb executioners burned the bodies of other victims.

Eventually the seven Muslims were found and rescued by soldiers from the Bosnian Serb Army who took them to Banja Luka for medical treatment, from where they eventually made it to the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

A day after publication of the Koricani killing story, Nezavisne Novine's telephones hardly stopped ringing, with the paper's chain-smoking editor-in-chief Zeljko Kopanja the principal target of callers' anger.

Despite accusations that he is "working against the interests of the Serb people" and death threats, Kopanja says that Bosnian Serbs are slowly waking up to the reality of what took place during the Bosnian war and that an ever increasing number wish to see individuals tried for war crimes so as to lift the burden of collective guilt.

"What national interest is there in robbing and murdering 200 people?" he asked rhetorically, insisting that "truth and justice" were his motives for publishing the story.

A week after breaking the Koricani story, Nezavisne Novine revisited the issue by publishing a survivor's testimony to war crimes tribunal in The Hague, a complete list of the victims, and an interview with Republika Srpska's public prosecutor Vojislav Dimitrijevic.

Following publication of the original article, Dimitrijevic reopened the case, ordering the regional prosecutor to demand the Koricani case files from the Interior Ministry, with a view to initiating procedures against those responsible.

The perpetrators are believed to have been reserve police officers commanded by Simo Drljaca, then head of the Prijedor police, who was subsequently indicted for genocide by The Hague Tribunal and died at the hands of the UK's Special Air Services resisting arrest in July 1997.

A Banja Luka court did investigate the killing in September 1992 and collected evidence which included personal documents of the victims, a complete list of their names, a forensic report, and a record of 10 interviews. Yet charges were never pressed.

According to Nezavisne Novine, "Judging by the demands of the judiciary to further the investigation and find the perpetrators, it is clear that there was no will in the Ministry of Interior to do so, which indicates that the names of the perpetrators are known to the police, and that, instead of being prosecuted, they enjoyed police protection."

At the time, Radovan Karadzic was president of Republika Srpska and hard-liners dominated Bosnian Serb politics.

Today, with Western support, the moderate Milorad Dodik is prime minister of Republika Srpska and many analysts believe that, despite its name, the Nezavisne Novine articles are part of a co-ordinated campaign to undermine and purge remaining hard-liners. Dodik put up some of the initial capital to launch the newspaper in 1995.

Having failed to hand over indicted war criminals to The Hague or welcome home the 70,000 non-Serb refugees he promised to accept, Dodik has disappointed his Western backers and is now under increasing pressure to deliver.

Analysts speculate that Dodik will start by going after low-level alleged criminals, such as the policemen involved in the Koricani massacres, in order to pressurise more senior obstructionists. Since last month's arrest of General Momir Talic, chief-of staff of the Republika Srpska army, many prominent war-time Serb leaders have already decided to keep a low profile.

Following the latest session of the Republika Srpska government, Justice Minister Milan Trbojevic said that he had it from reliable sources that The Hague Tribunal wished to take testimony from several leading Bosnian Serbs, including former Serb member of the Bosnian Presidency, Momcilo Krajisnik, former Republika Srpska President, Biljana Plavsic, and himself.

Their testimony is believed to widen the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, to include Bosnian war crimes. Trbojevic said that he could not rule out indictments against the witnesses themselves.

"The ball has begun rolling," said Kopanja, proud that his newspaper was first in Republika Srpska to address the issue of war crimes committed against non-Serbs. "We are going to keep on shedding light on war crimes." (Jadranka Slatina is a pseudonym for a journalist from Belgrade.)

ARREST FEVER

In the wake of the arrest for war crimes of Republika Srpska's chief-of-staff Momir Talic in Austria last month, speculation about who is likely next to follow him to The Hague is rife.

Immediately after Talic's arrest, the Belgrade news agency BETA published a list of names of individuals which, citing sources in The Hague, it says are sealed indictees. Meanwhile, Republika Srpska's justice minister, Milan Trbojevic, announced that he had it on good authority that the indictment against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would is be extended to include events in Bosnia.

Trobojevic also reported that at least ten leading individuals from Republika Srpska would be asked to appear in the Hague as witnesses in relation to this. "Alongside Momcilo Krajisnik and Biljana Plavsic, I am on that list as well", he said, adding that witnesses have no immunity from arrest and may therefore find themselves in the capacity of the accused.

Trbojevic, nevertheless, remains sceptical about both the list of sealed indictments and the extention of the Milosevic indictment. "It is possible that the information has deliberately been leaked in order to gauge the effect," he said.

Citing, as examples, Rajko Kuzmanovic, dean of Banja Luka University, and Jova Rosic, president of Republika Srpska's Constitutional Court, he said: "I know for sure that some of those people did not participate in the work of the then Crisis Committee [the body responsible for organising ethnic cleansing], and especially in the decision-making process."

Krstan Simic, Banja Luka lawyer and defence counsel for indicted Bosnian Serbs in The Hague, says that it is possible to make educated guesses as to which individuals may be wanted for war crimes on the basis of the published indictments against Gen. Talic and Radoslav Brdjanin, a member of parliament arrested in July.

"Many people in Republika Srpska today have a legitimate fear of arrest on the basis of sealed indictments," Simic says.

Speculation about future arrests extends into Croatia where no individual involved in the Croatian Army's incursions into Bosnia as well as the offensives against Serb-held territory within Croatia can ignore The Hague.

Although senior officials at The Hague have publicly stated that Croatian President Franjo Tudjman has not been indicted, this has not stopped speculation to this effect in the region.

Sarajevo weekly Dani has reported that the Croatian President is subject of an investigation, citing reliable sources in The Hague. And former Croatian Supreme Court judge Vladimir Primorac has been reported saying that Tudjman is "at The Hague's door" as a result of the Croatian Army's role in the Bosnian war.

* Branko Peric is an editor with the Alternative Information Network in Banja Luka.

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