RIGHTS-SERBIA: A Price for Investigating an Assassination

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Sep 9 2003 (IPS) - Amnesty International has called on Serbian authorities to investigate allegations of torture of suspects arrested in the largest ever manhunt in Serbia following the assassination of former prime minister Zoran Djindjic.

Amnesty expressed deep concern in a report published last week over ”detailed allegations of torture of detainees in connection with Operation Sabre by security forces, including asphyxiation by taping plastic or other material bags over the head, beatings, electric shocks to the head and body, and mock executions.”

Operation Sabre was the code name for police action during the state of emergency proclaimed after the assassination of Djindjic March 12. Djindjic (50) was killed outside a government building by a single sniper bullet that went through his heart.

More than 10,000 people were detained in the two months that Operation Sabre lasted. Of these, 4,500 were kept in custody.

The suspected assassin Zvezdan Jovanovic was arrested. Forty-four people were charged last month with conspiring in the assassination. Trials are expected to begin by the end of October.

The Amnesty report points to another side of the story. ”We believe that the use of torture and ill-treatment during Operation Sabre was widespread,” Amnesty said in its report. ”These are extremely serious allegations. We are asking Serbian authorities to allow us and other human rights groups unfettered access to interview any of the detainees privately so we may ascertain the true scale of the problem.”

Amnesty says detainees, their family members or their lawyers have submitted evidence of dozens of cases of police torture. The report adds that many victims were too intimidated to talk openly, fearing they might be arrested again, or face pressure.

This is the first time after former president Slobodan Milosevic fell from power three years ago that Amnesty has accused Serbia of serious violation of human rights.

Such allegations were common during the days of Milosevic. Following the repression of ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian province Kosovo, Milosevic’s regime was blamed for the worst human rights record in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians were expelled from Kosovo in 1998 under the pretext of fighting armed rebels who wanted independence from Serbia.

Operation Sabre targeted many of those old warlords. The Amnesty report has become controversial because Operation Sabre enjoyed broad public support.

Opinion polls in March and April showed that about 70 percent of those surveyed supported the widespread arrests of suspects. Many people said they were happy to see police action against those seen as criminals, gang leaders or drug dealers.

Minister for the interior Dusan Mihajlovic said that Operation Sabre had ”cleansed the country of organised crime,” besides uncovering the conspiracy that led to the assassination.

Minister for human and minority rights Rasim Ljajic denied the allegations by Amnesty. ”There was no ill-treatment of detainees in prisons,” Ljajic said in response to the allegations. But he admitted he did not know the conditions in which suspects were kept in police stations.

”Torture is not a method used by Serbian police,” police chief Sreten Lukic said. But in the face of the Amnesty allegations, he promised an inquiry to be carried out by the inspector-general of the Serbian police. ”If we find that there were cases of excessive use of force, sanctions will follow,” he said.

Leading human rights groups in Serbia and independent analysts have expressed doubts about the sincerity of the police in conducting such an investigation.

”Apart from cosmetic changes, the police force remained mostly the same,” says Natasa Kandic from the Humanitarian Law Centre in Belgrade. ”One has serious doubts that the people who were engaged in torture, ethnic cleansing or other atrocities in the Milosevic era could have changed their ways.”

Analyst Ivan Torov shares this view. “Denials and statements by top officials show that they understand what this is all about,” he says. “But the new regime missed the chance of purging the police when Milosevic fell from power, and people cannot change their ways overnight.”