[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: Safe haven for criminals

[Iris Pilika]

>The Independent (London)
>
>
>February 15, 2001, Thursday
>
>First Edition; NEWS; Pg. 16
>
>MILOSEVIC AND HIS HENCHMEN LIE LOW TO ESCAPE JUSTICE;
>  YUGOSLAVIA A HUNDRED DAYS AFTER VOJISLAV KOSTUNICA'S
>VELVET REVOLUTION, SERBIAN CAPITAL REMAINS A PLACE OF
>REFUGE FOR INDICTED WAR CRIMINALS
>
>Justin Huggler In Belgrade
>
>
>
>
>DRAGAN JAKSIC is nobody special - just a professional
>driver. But one night two weeks ago, when Mr Jaksic
>was sitting at the wheel of his Audi on the elegant
>Proleterskih Brigada street in Belgrade, somebody
>walked up to his car and shot him through each hand,
>at point blank range.
>
>It was a professional hit, and the gunman could easily
>have killed Mr Jaksic, if he had been ordered to.
>
>In the ornate building opposite, Mr Jaksic's
>passenger, Goran Petrovic, was meeting Zoran Djindjic,
>the Prime Minister of Serbia and the most powerful man
>in the democratic alliance that now governs
>Yugoslavia.
>
>Three days earlier, Mr Petrovic had been appointed the
>new head of Yugoslavia's intelligence service, feared
>and loathed under Slobodan Milosevic, and one of the
>last bastions of power to fall to Mr Djindic's
>coalition.
>
>As Mr Jaksic writhed in agony, blood pouring from the
>hands with which he makes his living, the message was
>clear. Someone was warning the new government not to
>pry too closely into the murky dealings that went on
>under Mr Milosevic's rule, letting the new authorities
>know the gangs can still strike in the heart of the
>new Yugoslavia. Someone was telling the new
>authorities that they hadn't gone away.
>
>Today is the hundredth day since the democratic
>alliance led by Vojislav Kostunica took over the
>government of Yugoslavia. But Belgrade hasn't given up
>her secrets yet. In the past 10 years, there were more
>than 900 mysterious murders. Nobody knows who killed
>the journalist Slavko Curuvija, shot dead in the first
>days of the 1999 Nato bombing campaign. Or what
>happened to Ivan Stambolic, the former president who
>disappeared before last year's elections, and hasn't
>been seen since.
>
>Who ordered the killing of the warlord Arkan is not
>clear. And not all the names have emerged from the
>massive network of smuggling and organised crime that
>flourished under Mr Milosevic. Most of the grisly cast
>of Mr Milosevic's years are still here. Belgrade is
>still the war criminal's favourite address, and the
>city is a map of murderers, ethnic cleansers and
>gangsters.
>
>Take a stroll through any of the more fashionable
>residential quarters and, if you are lucky, you might
>spot one of them - but they are furtive creatures.
>
>Slowly, remorselessly, we are told, the net is closing
>in on the war criminals. On Monday, the international
>war crimes tribunal is to open an office in Belgrade.
>This week, the new government is clearing Mr
>Milosevic's placemen out of the judiciary to open the
>way for prosecutions in Serbia.
>
>The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, is
>rumoured to have said there are 16 indictees in Serbia
>- how many of those are publicly indicted, and how
>many named in sealed indictments, is unclear. Indicted
>Bosnian Serbs may be hiding here.
>
>Among the expensive villas on Dedinje hill, the king
>of the war criminals lives undisturbed in his old
>lair: Mr Milosevic, indicted for genocide and war
>crimes in Kosovo, is still in the presidential palace.
>His private house, nearby at 11 Uzicka street, stands
>empty. The new President, Mr Kostunica, has not
>evicted him from the palace, and some in the new
>government are beginning to mutter discontentedly at
>that.
>
>Inside, one of the bodyguards says, Mr Milosevic has
>fallen out with his wife, Mira Markovic.
>
>Wander across town to the expensive neighbourhood of
>Banovo Brdo, and you stumble on 129 Blagoje Parovica,
>a big villa with mirrored windows, and a
>thuggish-looking plainclothes bodyguard at each door.
>Inside, it is believed, lurks Ratko Mladic, the
>Bosnian Serb general who wrote his name across Bosnia
>in blood.
>
>He is indicted for commanding Bosnian Serb troops who
>wiped out the Muslim population in the "safe area" of
>Srebrenica in July 1995, who murdered civilians as
>they walked in the streets of Sarajevo, and rounded
>civilians up into concentration camps. But the Serbian
>government says justice for General Mladic, who
>committed his crimes in another country, is not a
>priority.
>
>At 3-5 Sokolska street, a nondescript block of flats
>in downtown Belgrade, lives Nikola Sainovic, the
>federal deputy prime minister at the heart of the
>worst war crimes in Kosovo. Mr Sainovic sent the
>orders from Belgrade to police units to force tens of
>thousands of ethnic Albanians out of the province and
>to torch their homes. It is rumoured, too, that Mr
>Sainovic had his own private racket selling property
>looted from Albanian homes in Kosovo.
>
>At 9 Koste Glavonjica street, in an expensive block of
>flats, lives Milan Milutinovic - who still holds the
>public office he had during the Kosovo war: President
>of Serbia, the larger of federal Yugoslavia's two
>republics. Recently, details of his shady past have
>emerged, including how he stole firefighting planes
>from Croatia during that war, and sold them to Greece.
>
>
>A hundred days into the brave new Serbia, Belgrade
>still has plenty of secrets to tell.
>
>Leading article, Review, page 3
>
>GRAPHIC: Vojislav Kostunica: One hundred days of
>reform
>
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