SERBIA: Secret Service Goes to Internet

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jul 9 2003 (IPS) - Many things have changed in Serbia since former president Slobodan Milosevic fell from power three years ago, but no one was expecting the recent launch of an Internet-based recruitment drive by the new incarnation of the country’s once-powerful intelligence agency.

Many things have changed in Serbia since former president Slobodan Milosevic fell from power three years ago, but no one was expecting this.

The former Serbian Security Service (RDB), once the secretive and powerful pillar of Milosevic’s regime, has launched a recruitment drive on its Internet site in its new incarnation as the Security and Information Agency (BIA).

“It’s good that they have come out of the cold, as many taboos must be broken,” says Biljana Kovacevic Vuco from the Yugoslav Committee of Lawyers.

The BIA was established in June last year following an overhaul of the police force. It is one of the two branches within the Serbian Interior Ministry. The other is the Public Security Service, which carries out usual policing work.

Agents were recruited to the RDB in the past from thoroughly vetted families. That usually meant the families of people already in the service, considered to have unquestionable loyalty to the Milosevic regime, or to the communist governments before him.

The family links are being broken through a new openness. Recruitment advertisements are now posted on the website. Information on the structure of the agency, its budget, and what it does are all now in public domain. Going public with this kind of information was unthinkable in old Serbia.

The website explains, for instance that BIA will be run by a director, a deputy director and an unspecified number of assistants and consultants. Its work will be overseen by the Serbian parliament.

It has four departments for intelligence, counter-intelligence, and for dealing with terrorism and organised crime. Two other departments handle administration and technical support.

Its budget has been announced as 1.75 billion dinars (31.2 million dollars) a year, a tiny fraction of the annual national budget of 4.7 billion dollars.

This is a dramatic change for what used to be the agency without a face. Its activities earlier were mostly the assassination of anti-regime leaders. Those who carried out the killings were usually criminals who were promised they would be let off if they did the dirty work for the RDB.

But many doubt the effectiveness of the changes unless the old staff is changed. “It’s hard to imagine how such an organisation can change properly if there is no lustration (cleansing) among its members,” says Kovacevic Vuco.

A law introduced by the parliament last month says that no person who violated human rights in the past could hold a public position for five years. The law covers judges and policemen among others.

The old staff working with the new BIA has many skeletons in its cupboards, experts say.

After Milosevic fell from power, some of his aides admitted in court that smuggling operations financed the secret service. They revealed also that it had more than 300,000 informants who worked for it. They said the secret service prepared dossiers on more than 400,000 journalists, human rights activists and opponents of Milosevic’s regime.

“No matter what they call themselves now or what they do, all of them (from BIA) should have been sacked and after inquiries, selectively readmitted to work,” says analyst Milos Vasic.

Vasic also points out that some BIA employees were involved in the conspiracy that led to the assassination of former prime minister Zoran Djindjic last March, and that they are due to face trial later this year. Vasic and several others say that the BIA is practically a re-styled RDB.

Two RDB bosses under Milosevic, Frenki Simatovic and Jovica Stanisic, surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) a few months ago after they were charged for war crimes and atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia.

More than 200,000 people, most of them non-Serbs, were killed in those wars. Milosevic opposed Croatia’s and Bosnia’s move towards independence from former Yugoslavia. Simatovic and Stanisic pressed the RDB into operations on his behalf. Evidence of that has appeared regularly at the trial of Milosevic at the ICTY.

During the days of Milosevic, it was considered traitorous to question the role of the RDB. Those who did, put their lives at risk.

Rade Markovic, the last RDB chief under Milosevic, is standing trial in Belgrade for his role in major assassinations, or assassination attempts.

These cases include the killing of former president Ivan Stambolic and of the owner of a Belgrade daily, Slavko Curuvija. Vuk Draskovic, an opposition leader in Milosevic’s era, survived an assassination attempt in 1999. Markovic is standing trial in this case as well.