used without permission, for "fair use" only

MY ARMY KILLED MY MOTHER

by Ivica DJIKIC

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, February 10, 2001

For almost a month and a half a black plastic bag with a mark "US-22" has been lying in the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Rijeka. That mark conceals a whole life. The mark does not tell us that Dusanka Vranes would be sixty four years old now, that she would probably be playing with her granddaughters Suzana and Sanja, and waiting for the postman bringing with her monthly pension check. Ten years earlier, when it became obvious that great blood would be shed, Dusanka Vranes was aged fifty four. In 1991 this nurse lived in her apartment in Gospic with her common law husband Nikola Gajic. People say they always minded their own business, lived quietly, and saved all the money to finish their house in Smiljansko Polje, five kilometers from Gospic.

Dusanka had a son from her first marriage with certain Knezevic. He was born in 1965, and after completing high school in Gospic, he enrolled in the Naval Technical School in Split. After the school he spent eight years on the ships of the Yugoslav War Navy, and in 1988 he was transferred to Pula. In the summer of 1991 Dusanka said to her son that he had not been trained to shoot at his people, and he listened. She also told him to leave the army, because no army had ever made someone happy, but he didn't listen. In August 1991, he deserted the barracks in Muzil, and joined the Croatian National Guard.

Blown Up Apartment

A few days later, he went to the barracks in Barbariga, where he and several other men captured two tanks, two trucks, two cannons and two hundred shells. His problems with the intelligence service of the Yugoslav army, which was still stationed in Pula at that time, began soon afterwards. While the agents looked for him, Dusko Knezevic was in the field. He worked as an operative in the 119th brigade and was wounded while capturing three military warehouses in Delnice. He was in the hospital briefly, after which he continued fighting all over Lika, until the forced retirement on December 31, 1995.

Dusanka Vranes' last visit to her son's apartment in Pula was on August 24, 1991, on her granddaughter's birthday. She told him about strange things happening in Gospic, the tense atmosphere and about her fear. Despite fear, she returned to her apartment in Gospic, the town where Mirko Norac and Tihomir Oreskovic conducted a reign of terror. In the end of September, she called Dusko's wife Zeljka and sounded scared.

"She told me how they broke into her apartment that night, stole what they could and destroyed the rest, pinned his Yugoslav People's Army diploma to the closet door with a knife. That diploma was probably the reason of all her troubles. And, of course, the fact that she a Serb," says Zeljka Knezevic. Dusanka Vranes apparently recognized the intruders, but that didn't prevent them from coming back. In the period from late September to mid October they came two more times, took her to be questioned twice, and in the final phase her apartment was blown up. She moved to the house in Smiljansko Polje with Nikola Gajic. Soon afterwards, both of them were taken to another questioning. The witnesses said they had been tied up by two military policemen and taken to Gospic. They came back alive, but their lives would not last much longer.

"On the night of October 16 a truck came to Smiljansko Polje and started rounding up Serbs. The eyewitnesses have told me that the dogs had been barking terribly, trying to break free from the chains," said Dusko Knezevic, but the people that had arrived in the truck didn't mind. They loaded the truck with Serbs and left.

Hiding Murders

Dusanka Vranes and Nikola Gajic were last seen on October 18, 1991. According to Knezevic, a woman from Gospic saw them when she came to inquire about her parents, also taken away the previous night. Dusanka and Nikola were taken to the barracks in Perusic, but apparently somehow managed to escape. However, then the action "snipers and radio-stations" was started in Gospic. The aim of the action was to catch the alleged members of the fifth column, which meant all the Serbs from Gospic, especially intellectuals and prominent people. Vranes and Gajic were caught at 7am on October 18, 1991. The military police took them, as Dusko Knezevic found out later, to the barracks in Perusic, where they were tortured and maltreated for the next six of seven days, and then executed.

"My mother has three bullets in the chest, one bullet in the head, she was hit with an ax in the face and in the chest. The lower part of her body is missing," said Dusko Knezevic. Dusko found out about the death of his mother from Bozic's Slobodni Tjednik [nationalist Croat tabloid published in the early 90s]. Sometime in November or December of that year, his wife Zeljka was reading the magazine, which said that Dusanka Vranes had been murdered in Gospic, and that Mercep's people had killed the Serbs from Gospic (the number stated in the article was between 100 and 200). Dusko's friends soon began to call him in Pula to express condolences. Dusko, however, could not believe that Croatian soldiers had murdered his mother.

"I could not understand that the members of the Croatian army killed my mother while I was on the front, fighting in the same army. I could not understand that... In January 1992 it was clear she was gone, but I still didn't believe she had been killed. I asked some of my friends in Gospic if they knew anything about it, but they told me they knew nothing, and that I should keep my mouth shut," said Dusko Knezevic. Years of unsuccessful search followed. They wrote letters to Tudjman, the Government, the Parliament, the International Red Cross, made many phone calls, but found nothing. Wherever they asked about the murders in Gospic, they were told those were lies and misinformation, and that no executions had happened in Gospic.

During this whole period Knezevic did his job in the 119th brigade of the Croatian Army, but could not advance further from the rank of sergeant, which he brought from the Yugoslav People's Army. According to his superiors, his promotion was directly prevented by General Mirko Norac, at that time the commander of the Fifth Military Region. It is clear why, since precisely this waiter from Sinj, who became the favorite Susak's [the Croatian Defense Minister at the time] general overnight, was the only government in the town in which firing squads for execution of citizens with unsuitable ethnicity had been formed.

Generals Monsters

"I found out about my mother's destiny only a few months ago, when the bodies buried on Lipova Glavica were exhumed and identified. It became clear to me that the National Unity Government knew all about the murders of the innocent people in Gospic, but kept quiet. All of them are responsible for what has happened. I also learnt that Serb scouts had found the bodies on no man's land between Siroka Kula and Gospic. The bodies had been were thrown off a truck and lay in the grass for days," said Dusko Knezevic, who testified in the investigation against Oreskovic and his group on January 15 this year, and who considers the Republic of Croatia the murderer of his mother. He would like to find a lawyer who would sue the state for the murder of Dusanka Vranes.

The black plastic bag marked with "US-22" still lies in the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Rijeka, and in the bag lies the decomposed body of Dusanka Vranes, whose life was taken with three bullets in the chest and one in the head by the monsters who have been presented to the nation as national heroes. Dusko Knezevic will not take the black plastic bag with the remains of his mother, because he doesn't have $3,000 needed for a burial at the Pula cemetery. The state refuses to give $3,000 for a decent funeral of the woman killed by the criminals with ranks of generals and huge military pensions.

"If [Prime Minister] Racan or [president] Mesic do not pay my mother's funeral, even from their own pockets, I will take that bag and bury it here in my yard in Pula. If it has to be like that, let it be," concluded Dusko Knezevic.

Translated by Feral Tribune and M.Kocic