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Behind the headlines "Serb returnee admitted murder from 1993", "Chetnik from Tinje accused of murder and arrested", "Suspect in a murder of a guard soldier surrenders to the authorities"... - that recently appeared in the press, hides brutal maltreatment of Vladimir Maricic in the Benkovac Police station

by Boris RASETA

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, November 22 1999

When Vladimir Maricic, a 28-year-old Serb who had returned to Croatia on November 1 1999, on November 2 left the interrogation at the Police Station in Benkovac he was convinced that he would be able to peacefully continue his life in Croatia. Maricic is an inhabitant of the village of Tinje in Ravni Kotari, where he planned to stay, not even dreaming of what was going to happen next. The Police invited him to another interrogation on November 3, at eight o'clock in the morning. Maricic went to that interrogation not expecting anything unusual.

However, this time the scenario was different from that of the previous day. At eight o'clock no one received him. However, Maricic persistently waited to be "received" which finally happened at 2pm. Between then and the nightfall he was asked only a few questions but the atmosphere of the "informative talk" was becoming increasingly menacing. Gathered policemen at first started to insult, provoke and humiliate him. Then they started to slap, grab his throat, hit him with a night stick in the belly ("To check how strong your abdominal muscles are"), neck and mouth. Maricic stood in the center of a circle and like a ball was thrown from one policeman to another.

Five police officials thus spent the whole night "playing" with Maricic, who was taken the following morning to the investigative prison in Zadar under suspicion of "shooting at a truck near Tinje on January 23 1993 together with his collaborators and killing Miljenko Zoric from Lukorane". Fearful for his life, on November 5 Maricic's father, acquaintance Gliso Kolundzic and representatives of OSCE visited Maricic in prison. After a brief consultation with them, judge released Maricic since there was no evidence for criminal charges or reasons to keep him further in custody.

This scandalous story, however, has a few more unbelievable elements. Croatian daily newspapers published fairly voluminous articles about Maricic's case under the following headlines: "Serb returnee admitted murder from 1993", "Chetnik from Tinje accused of murder and arrested", "Suspect in a murder of a guard soldier turns himself in", "Culprit turns himself in to the authorities", "Culprit surrenders to the Police and admits murder of a Croat soldier"! In all of these articles, it is stated that Maricic passed through "a criminal processing". On the other hand nothing is mentioned about the violence that changed Maricic's personal description, nor the judge's decision to release him and give up further investigation.

In spite of judge's decision, Maricic still does not dare leave his home, since the papers declared him for a murderer so that glede&unatoc [in view and in spite of] a judicial verdict he is only awaiting for a Croatian passport to leave this state with full rule of law, as quickly as possible...

Translated on June 17 2000