by Esad HECIMOVIC
The circumstances of Jamakovic’s appearance in court indicate the key problem with all anti-terrorist investigations in Bosnia-Hercegovina so far. On January 24 Mirza Jamakovic was taken from prison to the court house by the police. He testified as an expert witness in the trial of six defendants charged with killing Leutar. Last year, in October, Jamakovic was arrested as one of the leading officials of the Federation Police and charged with arms trafficking. At the time of the arrest Jamakovic was the leading expert of the Federation BH Police for land-mines and explosives. During the war, Jamakovic conduced many crime scene investigations and investigations after bomb attacks on Sarajevo. His investigations include the massacre in Vasa Miskin street, Merkale street attack, 18 Nikola Tesla street… Replying to prosecutor’s questions, on this occasion he confirmed that the device used in the assassination of Jozo Leutar was similar to that used in at least one assassination of policemen in Travnik.
Lack of evidence: According to reports about his testimony, Jamakovic “said that such balls had been used in terrorist attacks in Bosnia-Hercegovina, more specifically in the assassination of policemen in Travnik on July 31, 1998, in which one policeman was wounded”. The date is correct, but the story isn’t. On July 31 1998, in an assassination which used an explosive device with steel balls, one policeman, Ante Valjan, was killed. But, the steel balls did not kill on that day only. There is another case, more similar to the murder of Jozo Leutar, which is still being ignored by the authorities.
Early in the morning, on July 31, 1998, still unidentified person left an explosive device in a rubbish bin, near the spot on which late Valjan’s car was parked. When, after the end of the night shift, Valjan left the nearby Travnik police station, at 5:55 a.m., the bomb was detonated. The lethal composition of the explosive device was, according to the Travnik prosecutor Behaija Krnjic the key evidence that the intent of the attackers was to kill policeman Anto Valjan. ”The device was filled with a large number of small lethal steel balls. Once the device was activated these balls caused numerous injuries, all over the body. Three of them lead to severe bleeding and death,” prosecutor Krnjic wrote.
The authorities charged one suspect, Muris Ljubuncic with preparation, setting and activation of the explosive device that killed Valjan. In the assassination of Leutar, roles were distributed between six suspects. Charges against Ljubuncic were rejected in a trial in Travnik. In mid October 2000, the Federation BH Supreme Court confirmed the decision of the Travnik Cantonal Court to acquit Ljubuncic of all charges saying that “there is no reliable evidence that the defendant Ljubuncic committed the crime with which he has been charged”. Differences between the investigation against Ljubuncic in Travnik and that against six suspects in “Leutar case” do not end with the number of suspects.
Remote control witness: The prosecutor charged that Ljubuncic had put together two electronic circuits, one of which was used in the explosive device that killed Valjan. One circuit was found in Ljubuncic’s apartment, while the other one has not been found. The Supreme Court concluded that the other circuit, presumably used to murder Valjan, could have been made by someone else. ”That definitely does not exclude the possibility that the defendant had put together the electronic circuit, but it also does not prove beyond reasonable doubt that he had done so,” the judgment of the Supreme Court says. Ljubuncic was successfully defended in the case by Zenica lawyer Almin Dautbegovic, proving that the electronic circuit that was found in his apartment had been designed from easily accessible parts, available in ordinary hardware stores.
The Sarajevo investigation still does not have an explanation for the way in which the bomb was activated. Therefore, there is no remote control. Instead the assertion of the protected witness that one did exist is accepted at face value. Defense attorneys representing the defendants claim that the evidence against their clients is even thinner than in the case against Ljubuncic.
According to an experienced forensics expert, who has had a chance to evaluate evidence in “Leutar case”, only one of numerous steel balls was sufficient to damage the brain and cause death of the late deputy police minister. But, the place where the explosive device was attached to Leutar’s official Volkswagen Golf is crucial for further investigation. Expert Jamakovic also gave the definite answer to this question in his testimony. By the way, it must be mentioned that Jamakovic’s statements are far more precise now when he is in prison than they were while he was in service. Then he claimed that both the Federation Police, where he was one of the bosses, and FBI concluded that the explosive device “was an improvised bomb so that it is impossible to tell its type or the way in which it was detonated”. According to both statements the device was attached to the car somewhere between the exhaust pipe and the engine. Jamakovic claimed that at that spot “both the exhaust pipe and engine to a certain extent protect the driver”. The device in question, just like MRUD, has moderate explosive power. In this case device’s destructive force was directed at the front passenger seat. ”It could have been activated in all sorts of ways,” Jamakovic claims and explains that the device contained 0.7kg of explosive. MRUD mine weighs about 1.5kg and contains precisely 0.7kg of explosive.
Leaky indictment: All problems with the indictment were “filled in” in this case with the testimony of the protected witness number 30. Thus, he is the ultimate proof of the truthfulness of the indictment, although the accuracy of his statements cannot be verified. The law obliges the prosecution to back up witness statements with material evidence, which, as far as we know, hasn’t been done in this case. In the current version of the indictment all “holes”, from lack of evidence about the explosive device to the motivation of the defendants for the crime, are filled in by the protected witness. The investigation was unable to come up with the motive of anyone of the defendants for a personal showdown with the then second highest official of the Federation BH police. Based on the political consequences of the assassination, the prosecutor found “the assertion of the protected witness number 30 about political motive for the assassination of Jozo Leutar absolutely acceptable”. The prosecutor charges suspects with terrorism, even though evidence of political motive is necessary for such charges according to the current criminal code.
Jozo Leutar was assassinated on March 16, 1999. According to the Federation BH Police crime scene investigation, 80 steel balls with 5mm radius were found on the crime scene. One of the balls, pulled out of late Leutar’s head was identified as the cause of his death. This fact has so far been hidden from the public. If it has been clear since March 1999 that a steel ball caused Leutar’s death, then Jamakovic has known for at least three years that a similar explosive device had already been used in Travnik. Why hasn’t he spoken about that before his arrest?
Assassinations for comparison: Similar explosive devices were used in assassinations of Perica Bilic (killed on June 12, 1998), Ante Valjan (killed on July 31, 1998) and Vlado Stojak (wounded on February 9, 1998), all policemen of the Travnik police station. Out of these three cases the one bearing most similarity with the assassination of Jozo Leutar is the murder of Perica Bilic. The Police for the first time encountered steel balls in that case. Policeman Perica Bilic was in a car, together with policeman Almir Melic, also from Travnik police station. Melic was gravely wounded in the attack. There were no witnesses of the attack. Two policemen, of different ethnicity, got in the car in front of Perica Bilic’s house, to which Bilic had returned after being expelled in 1993. They had a day off and were going to travel to Kiseljak. When Bilic tried to start the engine, at about 9:10 a.m., the bomb exploded. The explosive device was attached under the car. Numerous steel balls, “liberated” by the explosion, broke at high velocity through the car floor, killed the driver and mutilated his body, while the passenger was seriously wounded. Investigators found at the crime scene “a vehicle lying on its right side, totally demolished by the explosion. A corpse was found next to the front part of the car.”
Since then the Federation police has been facing the problem of the origin of steel balls and only Jamakovic has now partly clarified that those balls can be found in anti-personnel mines named MRUD. Various anti-tank and anti-personnel mines were used in terrorist attacks in BH after the war. Those culprits that were discovered claimed that they had pulled mines on their own or with someone’s assistance from mine fields left behind after the war. For example, statements to that effect were made during the trial for the car bomb detonated in Mostar, and the trial of “Bugojno group”, found guilty of blowing up houses of ethnic Croat returnees. Lawyers representing most of defendants in “Leutar case” in their public appearances frequently drew parallels between Leutar’s murder and unresolved bomb attacks in central Bosnia and Sarajevo, including the bomb set under a bridge on the eve of Pope’s visit to Sarajevo, or those used for attacks on Croat religious objects in central Bosnia. In the attempted assassination of the Pope in Sarajevo and attacks on churches, however, the attackers used anti-tank mines, while in the assassinations of policemen anti-personnel mines were the weapon of choice.
Origin of balls: Jamakovic specified that small steel balls come from the anti-personnel mine MRUD. According to the American Defense Department encyclopedia MineFacts, MRUD is the Yugoslav version of the mine, filled with 650 steel balls of 5.5mm radius. More or less similar steel balls were found at the crime scene after the attacks on policemen in Sarajevo and Travnik. ”These balls were earlier produced in UNIS ball bearings factory near Pale. During the war they were not manufactured on the territory controlled by the Army of BH,” claims one expert for military production in BH. Military experts, contacted by this journalist, explained that thousands of persons had been trained to use these mines by the Yugoslav People’s Army or the armies that participated in the war in BH. ”Very little knowledge is required to pull steel balls out of these mines. The operation is very simple. There are two basic ways to do that. Of course, provided that the persons who made these bombs did pull balls out of MRUD mines. Perhaps, they did not have to do that at all, because a stockpile of these balls must have existed in BH. MRUD mines were manufactured in Bosnia,” one military expert says.
Four factories in Bosnia-Hercegovina, one each in Gorazde, Vogosca, Bugojno and near Mostar, manufactured anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Only one of them, Bugojno “Slavko Rodic” manufactured MRUD mines. By early 1999, out of almost 250,000 anti-personnel mines in Bosnia-Hercegovina, BHMAC registered 8,253 MRUD mines. Therefore, steel balls could have been pulled out of mines obtained from old mine fields, or could have come from other sources. ”One possibility is that someone simply changed the way these mines are detonated,” one expert explains. The police investigation still hasn’t come up with an answer to that question.
Jamakovic was the key Federation Police expert for mines and explosives. His arrest and charges of arms trafficking involvement necessarily brought into focus the credibility of many of his numerous activities: quality of police investigations, and the difference between his past and present statements. Three years after assassinations of policemen, the only clear thing is that the investigations have failed to identify real culprits. Policemen spent more time arguing about the most likely ethnicity of the culprits and possible political fallout from the crimes than searching for evidence. Now that Jamakovic has clearly and loudly admitted similarities between Sarajevo and Travnik assassination attempts on policemen, will the Federation BH Police and the Federation prosecutor initiate a new investigation? The trail of steel balls still leads to unidentified murderers.