BALKANS: Milosevic Held Guilty, Still Not Too Late for Serbia

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jul 5 2006 (IPS) - The Serbian Supreme Court has finally confirmed that former president Slobodan Milosevic did order the execution of his political opponents. What has been known for years is now official.

The verdict on Milosevic came while the Court confirmed long prison sentences last week against eight secret service policemen for the abduction and assassination of Milosevic’s predecessor Ivan Stambolic six years ago. Stambolic was Serbian president in the 1980s.

The eight have also been convicted by a district court for an assassination attempt in 2000 on present foreign minister Vuk Draskovic, who was then opposition leader. Prosecution is now seeking tougher sentences in this case.

“This is the final say on state-sponsored terrorism,” Draskovic said after the Supreme Court verdict. “Serbia deserves to know and deal with the fact that its leader did order such gruesome crimes, face that, and accordingly deal with the past.”

But conflicting views on the wars of the 1990s and the role of Milosevic deeply divide Serbia. Milosevic fell from power in 2000 and died last March.

For many, he remains a national hero who fought for the rights of Serbs, and did no wrong to Bosniak Muslims, Croats or ethnic Albanians. For others, he remains the man who irrevocably tarnished the name of Serbia and Serbs through involvement in the wars of the 1990s that led to the disintegration of former Yugoslavia.

“This final say (of the Supreme Court) is an opportunity to de-mystify the role of security services under Milosevic and the shameful role of the army, once for all, due to his abuse of both,” lawyer and first post-Milosevic interior minister Bozo Prelevic told IPS.

Among the eight held guilty by the Supreme Court were Milorad Ulemek (36) and Branislav Bercek (28), given the maximum 40-year sentence. Both were members of the notorious Special Operations Units (JSO) of the secret Serbian police in Milosevic’s era.

Their boss, former head of the secret police Rade Markovic (60), was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was convicted for relaying Milosevic’s orders to Ulemek, who organised the abduction of Stambolic while he was jogging in a Belgrade park Aug. 25, 2000.

Bercek killed Stambolic the same day. He was shot at point blank range while kneeling over a hole dug up on a mountain 80km north of Belgrade.. Stambolic was seen by Milosevic as a rival candidate in the presidential elections of September 2000.

The group behind this killing was clearly the hit squad of the Milosevic regime. Ulemek organised an assassination attempt on Draskovic in the Montenegrin coastal town Budva in June 2000.

The army provided helicopter transportation for him, Bercek and other aides on Milosevic’s orders, according to the court. Bercek fired several times at Draskovic, but missed. They returned to Serbia in the army chopper.

Army commander at the time Nebojsa Pavkovic faces a separate trial for this assassination attempt.

The JSO group, including Ulemek, are also on trial for another earlier assassination attempt on Draskovic in October 1999. On Milosevic’s orders they staged a car crash near Belgrade in which four of Draskovic’s aides died; he miraculously escaped.

Ulemek and several JSO members are on a separate trial for the assassination of first post-Milosevic prime minister Zoran Djindjic back in 2003.

“The pyramid of evil has been indisputably established and proven by Serbian courts,” Prelevic said. “It goes from the head of the state prior to 2000, to head of secret police (Markovic) and his executors (Ulemek and JSO). But this calls for other re-examinations, deeper ones. As first, the role of almighty Milosevic’s Socialist Party.”

In the course of the Stambolic and Budva operations, it was established that the killings were discussed at official meetings of Milosevic’s ruling Socialist Party.

Milosevic died four months back while in detention at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague in the Netherlands.

“For many, this is the end of the story”, Prelevic said. “But that should not close the history book.”

The story of the Milosevic family came to another kind of end in Serbia last week when the last two members of his family who were still in Serbia, daughter-in-law Milica and grandson Marko left for Russia.

They will join Milosevic’s widow Mira Markovic and their son Marko. Milosevic’s brother Bora, once Serbian ambassador to Russia, also lives in Moscow. His daughter Marija moved to Montenegro in 2001.