by Snjezana MULIC-BUSATLIJA and Irham CECO
I had a premonition that something may happen, and I found out from a friend that they were supposed to be deported. When it became clear that they would not be released, I took my address book and started calling the media, friends... I could not just like that allow them to take my man away, without telling us even where or how," Nadja Dizdarevic, wife of deported Boudellaa Hadz explains. Reacting to calls from the media and the word of mouth, more and more people joined the gathering. "In the name of Allah, the merciful, brothers and sisters, come out in front of the Central Prison now, support our sisters, spread the word." Tens of similar SMS messages circulated among the acquaintances, friends, people who belong to various Islamic associations, the same dzemat [Muslim parish], or simply knew each other. Some received calls by phone, some heard about the protest through the media. "I came after hearing about the gathering from sister (Muslims refer to each other as brothers and sisters, author's remark) Nadja. She said, those who want should come, they will be deported. We are not illiterate. We knew about the decision of the Supreme Court, we'd read the decision of the Human Rights Court. We responded to her request, we wanted to stand by her. I understand that, as a woman and a mother. She is a smart, intelligent woman, a Muslim sister. I hadn't even known her before. We called everyone we knew," Dina, a middle-aged woman wearing nikab [full Islamic cover for women], a participant in the protest, explains what motivated her to come to the Central Prison. "Believe me, we did not expect that that would last the whole night. I heard over the phone and I immediately came, in running shoes and a track suit... Everything was fine until they started to hit us,", Adnan, one of the beaten up protesters testifies.
The key role was played by the Visoko radio station Naba, which had four reporters on the spot and directly broadcast the protest. "Nadja Dizdarevic called me, that is how I found out about it. Otherwise I would have gone home to sleep. That night I ran the program until the dawn," the director of Naba, Muedib Sahinovic says.
"Spontaneous protest": "We were not violent at all... if we had, we would not have waited until the dawn. Our only goal was to see justice," a participant in the demonstration, Kemo, a brawny and good-natured young man, tells us. True, the protesters had three or four mobile radios they used to coordinate their activities, and they could also from time to time eavesdrop on the Police. But the protest started before mobile radios showed up, and before sisters started bringing tea to chilled protesters. It is clear that the protesters were rather diverse. "When everything started heating up, when the police attacked us, some of protesters started swearing at the policemen. And Muslims are not allowed to do that," Kemo says. But, there was some system in all of that; those with strong voices and authority and organization tried to maintain order among the protestors and avoid provoking a reaction by the police. Whatever, it seems that organization took place on the fly, on the spot. "Sisters brought bread, cookies, tea, mostly those who lived nearby, or brought food from home. We shared some of that with the policemen. Brothers said that no one was allowed to even glare at the policemen, let alone touch them. They are also Muslims, that's how we reasoned, we did not want trouble," one of the participants clarifies. Kemo, like many other protesters, wonders: "Where were the media? All TV teams left at midnights, only the guys from radio Naba, and police cameramen, stayed!"
Night has no witness: "The local police forces have the right to use suitable level of force when dealing with public disturbances, to limit violence. This was a police reaction to aggressive individuals who tried to start public disturbances,", Stefo Lehmann, UN mission in BH spokesperson, is adamant. He claims he is basing his statement on IPTF reports. However, several protesters claim the following: "There were three of them from the IPTF, one from Bangladesh, another one from Turkey, a third one from Jordan. They talked to us in English, messed around. Then around midnight, one of them turned around and said: 'Midnight, must go home to sleep'. Later, one guy from France came by, but he did not stay with us until the end." However, Lehmann claims that the IPTF, in accordance with its overseeing mandate, followed the action until the end. From the police side? Lehmann also insists that this protest had nothing to do with civic disobedience (which would make Police actions unjustified), but violent disturbances in which the Police merely tried to prevent an escalation of violence.
However, witnesses mostly confirm assertions made by the participants in the protest. Spaniard Eduardo De Vilar, who is attending in Sarajevo a seminar regarding the conscientious objectors and is very knowledgeable about details of classification of public gatherings or protests, happened to pass by the Central Prison by chance. "Of course, I saw a part of the protest, at about 2am. At that moment, for about 30 minutes, everything looked as a standard demonstration of civic disobedience. The police told them to move and disperse, and they simply refused. That's it, a peaceful protest. If someone tells you to move and you refuse. If they had an official permit for the protest the police would not have had the right to use force. I do not know what happened afterwards. Obviously, someone provoked someone else, perhaps only verbally, and that turned into something that can be described as public disturbances. But, I did not see that." All of that took place after the first serious "clash" between the protesters and the police, which took place at about 1:30am.
How does one take a car apart?: At that moment the protesters spotted a column of Police cars and a white civilian vehicle. Nadja Dizdarevic testifies: "It all took place within seconds. We saw that cars were coming, policemen were masked, they were taking someone away, also under masks. I recognized my husband. He was wearing the suit I had bought and sent to him to the prison some three-four days earlier, and a blue shirt that could also be seen. They put him in the civilian vehicle. I ran and shouted - my husband is in that car!" Once the white car in which the Police tried to remove Boudellaa Hadz was stopped and surrounded by a mass of bodies, the more entreprising among the protesters cut the tires so that the car could not move. No one could tell us when exactly that was done. "They only told me 'don't worry, he is not leaving from here' and they lay down around the car," Nadja Dizdarevic says. A small group recalled its friend, an auto mechanic, an expert. They called him to come to the spot with his tools. They were hoping to dismantle the captured vehicle from outside and thereby free the captives. They eventually gave up that idea as it would have provoked an even stronger police reaction.
Witnesses claim that there were at that time about 7 persons in the car. At one moment they ran out of air and had to open the windows, after making a deal with the protesters. Most of the time during which the car was blocked by the protesters, the suspect spent under the special forces policemen who sat on top of him, until they moved him to the rear seat after pulling a black woolen hat over his head. "the Police finally allowed me to talk to my husband. I asked him through the window (it was cracked open) 'Have you seen Nur?', the photo of our baby girl he had never seen. When he nodded his head under the mask, I was sure that that was him, that he understood me."
The police tried to negotiate with the protesters and convince them to lift the blockade, but they failed. At one moment, the Frenchmen from the IPTF joined the negotiations. He followed the investigation from the start and was fluent in both Arabic and English. The protesters allowed him to approach the car, but he did not spend much time there. Some of the protesters believed that he was a negotiator and were offended that "instead of our people the authorities are sending a foreigner to negotiate with us". In the meantime the police received reinforcements, tensions were increasing, and the protesters decided to wait for the morning, the next day, in hope that even more people would join them and thereby prevent the deportation of the suspects. They built barricades in some of the streets they had blocked by moving parked cars.
Until crack of dawn: In the meantime the police sought a way to prevent exactly that and finish the initiated operation. It is hard to tell what and when provoked the final eruption of violence. In the worst moments of the dispersion of the protesters the policemen were called murderers, Chetniks and Ustashe, and radio Naba, the only medium that systematically reported from the spot, directly broadcast all of that.
"I reacted when I saw a policeman hitting a sister, covered, with his hand in the head. I knew that he could not do that to me, so I joined the shoving!" Adnan testifies about his entry in the melee in which he ended up worse off. At the end, he was caught by six special-forces policemen. "Someone shouted, 'Get him, get him, he is the troublemaker!' They shoved me to the ground, pulled me behind a van and started kicking me all over, even in the head." Many of the protesters are bitter. "They hit women as if they were men!" Dina relates: "One of them (a policeman author's remark) hit me with a baton in the arm. I told him, 'look me in the eye and hit me again'. He looked at me and hit me again."
Several policemen were hurt in the final showdown with the protesters. Our source, with contacts in the Novo Sarajevo Police station claims: "Of course they fought. All of them are some sort of martial arts experts. It's not a joke to fight a special forces policeman. They threw stuff at us, they did all sorts of things to us."
Nevertheless, most of the protesters fled the police attack, because the final attack was fierce and the police did not spare anyone. "I saw how they caught a girl by her hair from behind and sprayed tear gas into her eyes. Another one was hit by a baton in the belly, she simply folded," one of the witnesses says. Dina told us about a granny, probably the eldest participant in the demonstration. She brought her two grandsons, aged about ten and twelve, along. "People asked her why she did not take the kids home and she said 'this is jihad, let them get used to it. Their father died for this country'. She brought both grandsons in front of the police cordon and told the special forces policeman: 'Their father died for this country. Look them in the eyes and hit them if you dare!'" Apparently, nothing happened then. However, witness K.K. in the melee during the dispersal of the demonstrators saw one of the two boys lying on the street and writhing in pain. He was complaining about pain in his ribs.
"Doctors were highly unethical. Five-six sisters approached physicians, but their visits were not recorded anywhere. Two of them were released only on Sunday [two days later]. You can imagine what their injuries were like," Dina says. Adnan adds that, arriving to the Urgent Medicine Center, he passed through a police block, and two policemen cynically asked "what's up, you slipped on a banana skin?". Doctor Zuhdija Kandic, who was on duty that morning, is adamant: "Whomever came here was taken care of as well as possible. We are here to do our job and we did not look into who's who. I do not know about other health centers and hospitals, but that's what we did." He adds that most of those who sought help that morning were policemen. The typical injuries were concussions, broken noses... "That evening we had a serious case because of a shootout that took place somewhere near Busovaca, the attention must always be focused on the more serious, grave intervention." According to Darko, who was returning with his friends from "Sloga" at about 2am, everything could have ended more peacefully. "We stayed there for about 30 minutes and walked through the crowd. Everything was very peaceful. Some of them were singing, some of the protesters prayed, and the policemen where there. They just watched over the protesters. Some of the protesters would run away, here and there, that's probably how they exchanged messages. At that time everything had the appearance of a peaceful demonstration. I was surprised by the absence of the media, TV teams, journalists... Later, watching the news, I could not believe that I was on the spot and apparently did not see anything."
Streetcar named fear: Witness K.K. is one of the few journalists who witnessed the demonstration all the way to the bitter end. In one of the last police rushes he was hurled against a wall, fell on the sidewalk and hurt his head. The following morning he saw in a tram one of the commanders of the special forces policemen, who had gone to work wearing plain clothes. K.K. summoned courage and sat next to the man who had "friendly convinced" him several hours before to give up futile efforts and get lost.
"Is this seat taken? Excuse me, I just want to ask you something - did you participate in the action?"
"Which action?"
"You are a policeman?"
"No, I'm not."
"I just wanted to ask you whether the police used unnecessary force in its dealings with the protesters?"
"That all depends, young man. Perhaps it seemed to you they did, I may think they did not (a smile). It was all within the allowed limits."
"But, is it permissible to beat women and children like that?"
"That also depends."
"What about journalists?"
"I see you got a good one (looking at a bruise above journalist's eye)"
They got off at the same station. The policeman offered a cigarette to the journalist. "Remember, you're young. People who do this sort of work don't think about stuff like that. To them, it's like lighting a cigarette. It's all the same!" The journalist tried to find out the name of his interlocutor, who responded: "You don't need my name, your name. One should not promote himself too much."
We met while I worked as a chief of the office for yetims [children of shehids, martyrs fallen fighting for Islam] for the Tesanj municipality. He was the director of an Egyptian humanitarian organization from Zenica in charge of Tesanj. I realized that he was a good, honest and ethical person. In Islam, according to the sharia law, which I observe, there is no dating. We met, proposed marriage, got married and lived happily. We first lived briefly in Zenica, perhaps for three-four months. We then moved to Tuzla. There, he was also a humanitarian worker of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. We spent two years there. After that, as my husband got a job in Sarajevo, with Human Appeal, we moved to Sarajevo and have been living here for already four years. We have been married for seven years and have four kids. I gave birth to one of them 22 days ago. He hasn't even seen it. Only in the newspapers, because on Friday morning I sent him a copy of a newspaper. He was deported the very same evening.
How did they live?: We always had a fantastic relationship. We were first a brother and a sister, and we were always above all friends and then everything else. I believe that marriage cannot function if a man and a woman are not friends and if they cannot trust each other. I know my husband well and I do know that he did not hide anything from me, nor did I hide anything from him. He is a man who always tells the truth, regardless of the cost. He is a very friendly person, had a lot of Bosnian friends, which is also proven by the night in front of the Central Prison and numerous supportive phone calls I have been receiving. He had a lot of friends, important officials in all fields, and all of them respected him. He always strived to help others, so that mothers of yetims, for whom he worked in the humanitarian organization, wrote letters and petitions and never could understand how something like that could happen to a man like him. He is a very ordinary person, had his hobbies, like cars. Every Saturday and Sunday he went to the car flea market. We led a normal life, no different from the way others live. We liked nature and regularly took short trips to the Igman Mt., source of the Bosna river... Work with yetims is a big field of work and there are a lot of activities, so that he did not have a lot of free time, but the time we spent together we spent with our children. We had friends, it wasn't like what people here expect, that an Arab would ban his wife from leaving the house on her own.
What does she think about accusations?: He was questioned only once, the day he was taken into custody, and the questions were quite ordinary. Do you know who Osama bin Laden is? Do you know what Al-Qa'ida is? Do you know where the American embassy is? That was all for these three months. Just consider what the accusations of terrorism are based on. You could ask anyone these questions. Nothing was ever proven, so help me Allah. His custody was extended, although they failed to find anything in our apartment, or in the organizations where he worked, or in the documents. They took as evidence from our apartment candy distributed by SFOR for the New Year and sparklers. They said that sparklers were weapons and that the red candy sticks were actually wax. I asked the Frenchman who was in the apartment whether that meant that they had given wax to the children. He did not respond. And that is all the evidence against my husband that was taken from our apartment. I do not know how someone can do something like that and just like that interrupt your life, destroy your family and children, so many families, for no reason, without any evidence. While other Bosnians lived abroad, my husband fought and spilt blood for this country.
by S. MULIC-BUSATLIJA
The Federation BH Ministry of Internal Affairs really respected the law in this case. Lakhdar was offered to see a lawyer and then they called me. At that point one of the Federation policemen explained to us why they had been taken into custody. Lakhdar was treated well, they did not handcuff him, and his personal belongings were not taken away; he was also permitted to eat and smoke. At one point he asked the policemen who else they were looking for. They responded - Boudellaa Hadz, and Lakhdar told them that he had already been at the ministry, as he had come with him in the car. They had issued an arrest warrant and wanted to send a patrol to pick Boudellaa up, but Lakhdar said that that would not be necessary and simply phoned him. Soon Boudellaa came to the Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs. On his own. He was also arrested at that point.
What is Lakhdar's link with the "Algerian group"?: When in early October Belkacem Bensayeh was arrested in Zenica, his wife called the Red Crescent and asked for help. Boumedienne talked to her and immediately went in his personal car to Zenica. There he entered the first attorney's office he came upon, and that happened to be Nermina Pivic's office. There he introduced himself and said he was looking for an attorney who could represent an Algerian man. Since Pivic was absent, on a business trip, the secretary asked for information about the defendant. However, Boumedienne did not know the information and told the secretary that the wife of the arrested Algerian man would contact her later. The secretary took Lakhdar's information and gave him attorney Pivic's business card.
Later, during the investigation, both the attorney Pivic and the secretary testified about how Belkacem hired them, the police thereby heard about Lakhdar and connected the two. Then they issued an arrest warrant for Lakhdar as well.
How did the investigation go?: The investigation went on for three months, totally unnecessarily. As soon as they were turned over to the investigative magistrate, horrendous violations of human rights started. I have never experienced anything similar in my career. All of them were tied up, which is impermissible during the investigation. We demanded from judges to have them untied, but that was not allowed. Also, my client Lakhdar, although he demanded to be tried in his native language, received documentation in Bosnian. Therefore, already at that point rules of fair and honest judicial procedure were violated.
Also, the defendants were not informed about the evidence that the prosecution used to justify the request to initiate an investigation.
I requested that at the first questioning, based on article 13 of the criminal law and article 6 of the European convention about fair and honest trials, the defendants be presented evidence against them. The prosecution refused.
In three months only one witness was questioned. Mensur Sucic, Lakhdar's father-in-law, who had worked for the American embassy. He was questioned twice with the lie detector and passed both times. The prosecution also had experts examine lenses and cameras taken from the organizations and houses of the arrested. Experts confirmed that these were amateur cameras and lenses that cannot provide significant magnifying power, and all the photos were those of yetims to whom they had given humanitarian aid. They were obliged to send these photos every six months to the donors, as a proof what the money was spent for. Post offices also provided a list of phone numbers dialed by the defendants and numbers from which they were called. That list did not include the infamous number from Pakistan which they allegedly used to contact Al-Qa'ida.
When the investigation was concluded, lawyers were not informed at all so that the investigative magistrate and the defense attorneys could sign a statement. A document that I haven't seen was sent to the Federation prosecutor. Then it was said that the Federation prosecutor would make a decision about the investigation in 15 days. According to the law, he is supposed to do that within 8 days. However, 15 days went by and the prosecutor was still silent.
The suspects were not allowed to attend their defense or presentation of the evidence. They were only once taken to the Supreme Court and given a chance to defend themselves, because that was the formality that had to be observed. I officially demanded that they be brought to the court because they, not the lawyers, were defendants in the case. I was then told to ease a bit, that that was expensive. I then suggested that they ask the American embassy for money. Just imagine, the prison is several hundreds of meters from the court building and now they supposedly needed a lot of money to pay for the escort for the "terrorists" and sharp shooters to secure the street. They also apparently had to stop traffic and close the street between the prison and the court building. After all that the lawyers, on behalf of Boumediene Lakhdar, Mohamed Nechla and Boudellaa Hadz filed a suit against Bosnia-Hercegovina and Federation BH, and the Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs, respectively, because their Bosnian citizenship was annulled only based on "suspicion that they had hidden intentions to disrespect the Constitution of Bosnia-Hercegovina, her laws and regulations". The plaintiff in this case never submitted evidence based on which their citizenship was rescinded.
Was there a plan for deportatin?: Yes there was. I realized that on January 15, when they called me from the court and told me, as the leader of the defense team, to get authorization from other attorneys and pick up the personal belongings of the suspects and objects taken from the humanitarian organizations from the prison by January 16 at noon. That indicated that the suspects were not going to be able to pick those belongings themselves. Although I received the necessary authorizations, on January 16 at noon instead of to the prison I went to the Human Rights Court and requested a temporary injunction banning deportation, extradition or any other mode of the delivery of these men whose goal is their expulsion be issued.
At the same time there was a meeting at the Helsinki Committee that was attended by Ms. Madeleine Rees, chief of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She then, on behalf of her office sent to the Human Rights Court a letter in support of our request. At the same time she approached the deputy Human Rights and Refugees Minister, Ms. Haracic-Sabic and pointed out to her that "any mode of activity directed towards the removal of the members of the 'Algerian group' from Bosnia-Hercegovina, at the time they are released from custody, would represent a violation of their human rights."
There is another indication that there was a plan for deportation. I, as the leader of the team of defense attorneys, was not able to obtain the official document that ordered that the Algerians be released from custody. Thus, I was forced on January 17 to watch the mail being delivered to the prison and lawyer's mailboxes. At 4pm, when the prison working hours for that day ended, I saw that they were taking mail to the prison, but that none of the mail was delivered to the lawyer's mailboxes. I found out from my contacts inside the prison that the document ordering that the Algerians be released from custody had arrived in the prison. I was very persistent and bugged the clerks of the court who work on the delivery of mail to tell me what they had delivered to the prison, but did not deliver to my mailbox. Actually, the plan was that I be delivered the document the following morning when I came to work. They would have been deported in the meantime. Then, at 5:15pm I managed to obtain the document ordering that all of them be released from custody. Therefore, the Algerians had already been kept for an hour and fifteen minutes illegally in the prison. Then, I went to the Human Rights Court and demanded that they urgently contact France, where the president of the Court was at the time. At 5:59pm I was informed over the phone to come to the Human Rights Court to pick up the temporary injunction which ordered that Bosnia-Hercegovina and Federation BH take all the necessary measures to prevent that Boudellaa Hadz, Boumediene Lakhdar, Mohamed Nechle, and Saber Lahmar, be expelled from Bosnia-Hercegovina by force. The court ordered that the injunction was valid until February 11, 2002. The archivist of the Court Ulrich Garms was instructed to send copies of the injunction to the OHR, the OSCE, the UNMIBH, and the IPTF.
I took the injunction to the prison but they did not let me enter the building, for the first time in my career, because "working hours were over".
I demanded that anyone from the prison explain to me, as a lawyer whose clients had gone missing, when the document ordering that the Algerians be released from custody had arrived to the prison, when it had been delivered to my clients, why they had not been released, and based on what order and to whom they had been delivered.
Could the "Algerian group" be legally extradited and deported, according to our laws?: Yes, they could have been legally deported, but the law specifies a procedure for that. For extradition, an extradition request must come from a specific country. It must be legal and fully documented. If such a request exists, then the country that requests extradition of an individual must inform the prosecutor in writing why the extradition is requested and what is the person accused of. Then, a copy of the indictment and the guarantee that the extradited person cannot be sentenced to death are needed, and the proof that the person whose extradition is being requested is indeed the same as the indicted person. We have very good laws and according to them individuals can be kept in pre-extradition custody for between 45 and 90 days. That time is needed for the completion of the abovementioned documentation. I know for sure that Algiers approached our authorities with an official extradition request, but they later gave up, and I know why. According to the information I obtained, no one from the "Algerian group" had committed any crimes in Algiers, so they could not demand their extradition. Let me also say that in September 2001, Lakhdar and Boudellaa in Rome received new Algerian passports from the non-resident Algerian ambassador for Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Also, the Algerians could not be immediately deported because the law also specifies a procedure for denial of welcome. This is never done momentarily. Namely, after the decision to deport someone is made, the person has the right to appeal that decision. If the appeal fails, the person has three days to pack up and get ready.
Which laws and regulations were violated in the "Algerian group" case?: The USA authorities did not violate any of their laws, but they did violate our and European laws. Our authorities, in cooperation with the Americans, violated the following laws:
The Federation BH Constitution (Article 2, clause 1, Article 2, clause 2, Article 3, under a, clauses f,m, and e), BH and FBH citizenship laws, European convention about protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, Convention about the rights of the child and Convention against torture.
And that is not the end of violations of other country's laws. The Americans took the Algerians to Cuba, where the US Constitution or any of the American laws are not valid. There, like nowhere else in the world, they can be kept in custody indefinitely, so that that can go on for years. Prisoners do not have the right to defense, do not have the right to receive visits, they do not have any rights, period.