"Ten of us, in the bus, begged not to be exchanged, but Drago Krpina told us: ‘You have to be exchanged, and when you get to Zitnic, you can decide there whether you want to come back or not'. However, in Zitnic Krpina said that we had to go to Knin, and then we could decide whether to return or not. However, that was impossible, since even a bird could not get back to Zadar from Knin. There were sixty four of us from Zadar, all civilians, and another two men brought from other cities," says Mile Dragic, who today lives in Australia
Namely, the attorney representing defendant Radak, Luka Susak, has requested within the context of presentation of general circumstances in which the fighting started in that region, that Drago Krpina be summoned by the court as a witness. Susak, referring to several of his sources, describes Krpina's role very precisely, and that role may shock even those who know a lot about this politician from Ravni Kotari, whose career is indeed full of excesses, especially because that role is totally unknown to the wider public.
"On October 7, 1991," states the document filed by Susak with the County Court, "Mile Dragic, son of Cedomir, born on March 6, 1944 in the village of Kasic, was taken into custody in Zadar. 66 ethnic Serb citizens experienced the same fate in Zadar. On November 2, 1991, they were taken in a bus to Sibenik, where they were joined by ethnic Serb citizens brought from Split and Sibenik, also civilians taken into custody. On the same day, they were taken from Sibenik to Pavkovo Selo near Zitnic, and there they were exchanged on the principle ‘all for all'. Prior to the exchange their personal documents were confiscated so that they could not return to Croatia".
The description of Krpina's role in the exchange starts at this point. "We propose," Susak says, "that transcripts of the prisoner exchange be requested for this trial. Drago Krpina, today a representative in the parliament, was then on the bus with the prisoners, and promised them, upon their request, that they would be returned in the same bus, after the completed exchange, to Zadar. However, Mr. Krpina left the bus before it reached the final destination, and ethnic Serb citizens were not allowed to return to their homes in Zadar. Their situation was that much more difficult because prior to the exchange their personal documents were confiscated, so that they could not return to the Republic of Croatia". Drago Krpina, obviously, given his office at the time, knew who the passengers in "his" bus were.
Attorney Susak, whom we reached in his office in Zagreb, told us that he had proposed that Krpina be summoned as witness on the basis of statements by three of his clients who were victims of that exchange. Two of them today live in Croatia, and are afraid to publicly talk about the incident, while the third one, the abovementioned Mile Dragic, has been living for three years in Australia.
Mile Dragic confirmed over the phone his description of the exchange given in the document submitted to the County Court in Zadar. In a conversation with Feral's journalist Dragic - who was at the time a professor at the Technical College in Zadar - precisely and without hesitation related everything that happened from the moment he was arrested to the exchange in Pavkovo Selo...
On October 7, 1991, Mile Dragic, upon leaving the college building - at one o'clock in the afternoon - went to pick up his wife, an ethnic Croat and a chief nurse at the Zadar hospital surgery department. "When I arrived in front of the hospital, there were fifteen policemen there. I knew one of them from before," Dragic relates. "They arrested me. Dr. Josip Valcic [an ethnic Croat], a surgeon, was in front of the hospital and he tried to help me, but the policemen immediately aimed their Kalashnikov machine guns at him. Then, he simply gave me a sign to keep quiet and not resist. We were friends, but he could not help me. Immediately after the arrest, they took away all of my documents."
At first, Dragic says, he thought that everything was "a joke", but once beatings and maltreatment started upon their arrival to the Zadar prison, he realized that this was a serious matter. "They accused me of being a sniper, which is nonsense. There were another 64 civilians in the prison besides me. Given what some of them experienced in the prison, I don't really have the right to complain..."
Physical maltreatment in the Zadar prison stopped only after the visit of a Red Cross delegation. Most of prisoners were kept in custody between one and three months. None of them ever received any official explanation of reasons for their arrest and imprisonment. It is also interesting that the Ministry of Internal Affairs [Police] has "lost" all the documentation about their exchange.
On November 1991, Zadar prisoners were informed that they were going to be exchanged. "Ten of us begged not to be exchanged, but Drago Krpina told us: ‘You have to be exchanged, and when you get to Zitnic, you can decide there whether you want to come back or not'. I've been living in Zadar since I was twelve years old, my whole life. My whole life, everything I had earned and created, was in Zadar. Among other, I owned a three story building. However, in Zitnic - and the exchange was monitored by international community representatives - Krpina said that we had to go to Knin, and then we could decide whether to return or not. However, that was impossible, since even a bird could not get back to Zadar from Knin. There were sixty four of us from Zadar, all civilians, and another two men brought from other cities.
"And it is almost impossible to describe what happened to us in Sibenik. We were taken to some square, and people had probably been called to come to the square over media and loudspeakers, because a huge crowd turned up to see Chetnik [derogatory term for Serbs] prisoners! There was a huge crowd there and I though they were going to lynch us. That was absolutely the worst experience in my life. I thought, just like all of us prisoners, that they were going to eat us alive. I believe that they kept us in Sibenik on purpose for two hours, just so that we could be marched in front of a raging crowd. And Krpina was with us all the time. Two men, who grew up with him and went to school with him, begged him to save us. But he responded by saying: ‘No chance, I don't know who you are!'".
Krpina got off the bus a bit before the exchange, so that it became clear that the whole story about a possible return to Zadar was a lie. All the arrested civilians were actually condemned to a forced deportation: they were among the first victims of ethnic cleansing.
Other characteristics of these events confirm that. Namely, Dragic was fired on the day he was arrested. The justification was that he hadn't come to work that day. His wife was fired from the Zadar hospital somewhat later. Putting that together with the fact that the mentioned Serbs from Zadar were arrested in various locations while they performed their daily activities - some shopping for food, some in a garage, some at home - it is difficult to dismiss the likelihood that the Zadar police had very specific information about them, lists of people to be arrested, as well as that their movements had been closely monitored. After all, 160 buildings owned by Serbs were demolished that month in Zadar. Twenty five houses were blown up in the village of Bibinje.
In the end, Mile Dragic was taken to be exchanged in Pavkovo Selo and ended up in Australia. Everything he owned, a three story house in Borik, two cars and everything else, is gone, destroyed or looted. Today the Dragics are demanding damages in court. The house was set on fire three days after the departure of the rest of the family, while Mile Dragic even today undergoes psychiatric treatment in an attempt to deal with the consequences of torture experienced in the Zadar prison.
We attempted to contact Drago Krpina on several occasions, asking for his comment on these events. We even left a contact phone number, but the representative in the parliament never called back.
As the public is aware, Krpina was one of the more important men in the Tudman's regime. He was a representative in the parliament on several occasions. He was also a member of the National Security Council. It is obvious that as a high official of the Tudman's regime, Drago Krpina participated in the implementation of the policy of ethnic cleansing, forced deportations and intimidation of civilian population of Serb ethnicity.
Despite his statement that peace activist Zoran Ostric should have been recruited for the military and then murdered "with a bullet in the back of his head", which at the time scandalized the public, Drago Krpina was not reprimanded. Actually, he was promoted to the military rank of brigadier, and at one time was the head of the Political Directorate of the Croatian Army. In the parliament, among other, he was a deputy president of the Immigration Committee in the lower house, as well as personal advisor to Tudman on liberated territories. His "bus episode" could be, given his political standing and personal support from president Tudman and Gojko Susak [former defense minister], important evidence that the state leadership planned, or was aware of, or could have and should have been aware of the expulsion of innocent civilians based on their ethnicity. Even if they did not organize these expulsions, Tudman's authorities are responsible for not preventing them; especially since in the Zadar region varied and very efficient "persuasion" methods were used.
Krpina's role in this case is obviously something that needs to be dealt by courts. The only question is whether the Zadar County Court is the right venue for this case and whether Drago Krpina deserves the role of a defendant, rather than a witness, in this case.