POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Public Anxious to Know About Secret Police Files

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Nov 14 2000 (IPS) - After Slobodan Milosevic lost power in the September elections and October popular uprising, serious efforts are now being taken to remove the vestiges of the former regime in many areas.

It seems that the most complicated battle will be the one against the totally non-transparent State Security Service (SDB). Together with the so-called Public Security Service or police, SDB constitutes the Interior Ministry.

For two years now, SDB has been headed by Rade Markovic, one of the closest aides of Milosevic and his once-powerful wife. Markovic, 54, refuses to resign. In one of his rare interviews with non-government media, he explained that he would “abide by the law”.

“I’ll submit my resignation then, after December 23 elections, to the new parliament and government of Serbia,” he said. His superior, Serbian interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, resigned on October 9 after broad public protests.

The December 23 elections in Serbia, bigger sister of Montenegro in Federal Yugoslavia, has become necessary after the victory of Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) in the September federal elections.

The agreement on early elections was hammered out a month ago, between DOS and Milosevic’s Socialists, who used to rule both on federal and Serbian level. It is widely expected that DOS will defeat the Socialists in next month’s elections, finally ending the communist rule here after 55 years.

“Markovic is stalling for time in order to destroy evidence of enormous misuses by SDB in the past,” Belgrade lawyer Svetislav Djurdjevic told IPS. Djurdjevic was the head of Belgrade police in the early 90s.

“No one knows how much evidence on all the illegal work of SDB has to be destroyed. The best guess would be that there are numerous documents on clandestine operations or dossiers on opposition politicians who came to power in the September elections,” Djurdjevic adds.

The Serbian public is anxious to find out about SDB’s clandestine activities.

The tapping of phones and interception of letters or e-mail of opponents of Milosevic’s regime were part of the illegal operations of SDB, sources within the service say. Dossiers were kept on opposition politicians, their symphatisers, non-government media journalists, as well as Serb journalists working for foreign media.

DOS leaders say that one of the first things they’ll do after the December elections will be to open all the dossiers.

“People have every right to know what was done to them here” says Zoran Zivkovic, one of DOS leaders. “The work of state security should not be a taboo ever again,” he added.

SDB only recently turned to Serbs in Serbia. In the early 90s, SDB was involved in the creation of different paramilitary units that took part in wars in former Yugoslavia. Some of the units are believed to be responsible for major war crimes against non-Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo.

“That is the evidence that is probably being removed,” said Natasa Kandic, the head of the respected Humanitarian Law Centre (HLC). “For years we felt that dark things are happening within SDB. The time has come to start revealing those secrets.”

In Kandic’s opinion, which is shared by many law experts, it is high time that the series of unsolved crimes, that turned Serbia into the land of insecurity for Milosevic’s opponents, come out in the open.

HLC recently received a document, sent to it by a SDB employee, that showed SDB involvement in the surveillance of prominent journalist Slavko Curuvija on the day of his death. Curuvija was killed in broad daylight by unknown assailants, at the height of NATO air campaign against Serbia in April 1999. He was highly critical of Milosevic and his wife, Mira.

SDB is also blamed for a mysterious car crash in October 1999, where four aides of prominent opposition leader Vuk Draskovic died. The investigation established the fact that the truck involved into the accident belonged to SDB, but the name of the driver who disappeared from the scene was never revealed.

The disappearance of Ivan Stambolic last August is still unsolved. Toppled by Milosevic from the presidency of Serbia in 1987 through the typical communist party intrigue, Stambolic turned to private business.

He reemerged in the independent media ahead of September elections, and was highly critical of Milosevic. On August 25, he was abducted and his whereabouts remain unknown.

According to Slobodan Vucetic, former Supreme Court judge who was sacked earlier this year by Milosevic’s regime, once the rule of law is established in Serbia “things will come into their right place”.

“It is not a surprise that SDB was a non-transparent, clandestine service,” Vucetic told IPS.

“One must remember that the nature of this service did not start with Milosevic’s ten years of power. Those years were preceded by 45 years of communism, when such services made an important lever of power. SDB is practically the heritage of a single party, communist state that existed here since 1945.”

Until the September elections, Yugoslavia was the only country in the region where communism continued after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

According to DOS law expert Dragor Hiber, the state system that existed unchanged since 1945 should be dismantled. Only then can SDB work become more transparent, he adds.

“In every country in the world, it is highly delicate when one starts to explore the work of (the) secret service,” Hiber told IPS.

“Due to the specific circumstances here, I believe that there is a long process ahead of us. But in the end, all those who are responsible for certain things will go to court,” he added. (IPS-END-eu-ip-vpz-ral-00)