The blood-thirsty Chetnik and his imagined victims.


Sretko, a Serb, has been sentenced to death in Bosnia for murders, of which at least two have not taken place.
[logo Libé]


JEAN HATZFELD
Le 22/3/97
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our special correspondent in Sarajevo.

Last winter at Kremes, a small village on a hill in Sarajevo, a woman crosses the farmyard of her uncle who talks about sheep with a man. She stops and shouts :

- Asim, is it you?
The visitor recognizes her :
- Yes, I am back.
- Then you have not been murdered?
- Murdered? I had only left for Kobila Glava. Why murdered?
- Because my brother-in-law has been sentenced to death for your murder.
- Sretko? When?
- Two years ago, in Sarajevo.
Then she tells him the story which begins with a drinking bout on November 11 1992, seven month after the war began. In Vogosca, three kilometers from Sarajevo, two drunken Serbian militiamen, Sretka and Borislav, decide to finish their drinnking bout on foot to Ilidza, another Serbian suburb. In the night they meet a checkpoint of militiamen to whom they offer the bottle of Slivovic. Unfortunatly, they are Bosniaks. The two drinking companions are taken to a police-station in Sarajevo, then to jail.

A public trial. Four months later witness accounts are flooding in about the violence committed by Serbian troops. The Bosnian presidency decides to increase worldwide anger against ethnic cleansing by organizing a great public trial. Sretko Damjanovic and Borislav Herak are tried before a military court for the crime of genocide in a bombed town after a hard winter. It is the first trial of war criminals in this war. The trial lasts ten days and is broadcast on television. Foreign journalists are encouraged to watch with the audience.

The evening before the trial, the lawyer Branko Maric meets Sretko Damjanovic for the first time in the judge's chambers, where he is confessing to six murders. Today the lawyer, appointed by the court, from the old town remembers : "I did not know neither him, nor the case. But my first impression was that he had learned his confession by heart". This worker-farmer was employed at the factories of TAS in Vogosca, a suburb with Serbs and Muslims. In April 1992 the war seperated this suburb from Sarajevo, the Muslims fled to the city or the hills. Damjanovic joined the Serbian militia of Radovan Karadzic.

Threats and tortures. During their first meeting in prison, the Serb tells his lawyer about the seven days of torture at the police-station from the moment he was on charge. Two months after the event, independent doctors in court gave evidence to scars of stab wounds and a broken rib, among other injuries. In the dock, Sretko Damjanovic claims he is innocent. His lawyer talks about the threats and torture endured by his client. Today he says : "In the atmosphere of that time it was not without risk to claim torture in front of the policemen present in court." He never suffered any harm himself.

In the dock, Damjanovic is not alone. His drinking companion and later jail companion Borislav Herak does not only repeat his confessions but adds continuously more. To the journalists who ask him in his cell, he expands upon the blood-soaked stories. "It is difficult for me to judge him" explains the lawyer Mr. Maric, "but to me and others he seemed mentally weak and at least easily lead". Publicly Herak tells about the killings, the rape-camps, the plunder, he accuses himself of 29 crimes, 6 with rape, and more then he did to the judge. The trial is a sensation. Herak accuses his mate Sretko Damjanovic of being an accomplice in the murder of 6 persons : three anonymous ("we did not know them") and three for which he gives the names Krso Ramiz and the two Blekic brothers, murders he describes with sordid details. On March 12 1993 the two Serbian millitiamen are sentenced to death. Their appeal is rejected. The lawyer appeals unsuccessfully to Supreme Court when he discovers that one of the supposed victims of his client, Krso Ramiz, already serves as a victim in the case against three other Serbian militiamen (Miro Vukovic, Bozo Jeftic and Nenad Damjanovic). They are also sentenced for war crimes. To this day, no death sentence has been carried out.

Three years pass and the Serbian suburbs are reunited with the town. The Muslim refugees return and among them the family Blekic. Before the war, Asim Blekic lived with his mother at Ugorsko in the outskirts of Vogosca. Early in April 1992, he fled to a center for refugees in Sarajevo. His brother raised about fifteen heifers and ewes. He stayed until May 25 in order to sell his cattle at the best price to his neighbouring Serbian farmers before putting on the Bosnian uniform at Kobila Glava in the mountains. He has known Stretko Damjanovic since childhood thanks to school, to football and his uncle, who also raised animals.


Documents for appeal. At the time of the spectacular exodus of Serbs on February 23 1996, fleeing the reunification, Kasim Blekic travels to his Serbian uncle Rede Damjanovic in Kremes in order to buy his cattle, in the same way the uncle had bought his three years earlier. When the sister-in-law in the farmyard tells him about the trial, he is taken aback. Due to a fire in his house, he is living in the house of a Serb family. And he spends his days working a tractor on the fields below. His brother lives on the second floor in an appartment-block and is unemployed because the TAS-factories are destroyed. Mr. Maric has sent the documents to get the case reviewed. His client has been sentenced to death for six murders. Three of the victims are anonymous, the fourth Krso Ramiz is redundant. The two last victims, Kasim and Asim, are every evening to be found in the café of Vogosca. Mr. Maric insists : "The minuteness of the confessions, the dirtiest details about the murder of the still-living brothers reflects the nature of the interrogations".

A concil of three judges appointed by the Supreme Court is going to decide if the appearance of new facts justifies the reopening of the milestone case. Four months after having sent the documents, the lawyer has received no answer. The case has not been brought to the Public Prosecutor of Sarajevo. The only positive feature of this case is the following : the "blood-thirsty Chetnik" in the central prison is suffering no harm from either revengeful ordinary criminals or guards.