Four member Vila family - father, mother and two sons were beaten to death. Branko Oljaca was decapitated. Retiree Vaso Jelic had worked for a long time in France, for "Renault", and at the beginning of the war volunteered and maintained the National Guard's and Police's vehicles for free; one evening [he] was taken from his house; his corpse was washed out of the river Sava two months later. When a group of masked men suddenly showed up in front of the house, Vaso's wife started shouting at him to flee through the back door. ``God be with you, woman, why should I flee?", was Vaso's reply. Afterwards, it was too late. The masked death squad broke into the house, tied up other household members and took Vaso Jelic away to never come back.
Many secrets are buried in the Sisak cemetery. Those days, the cemetery was out of bounds. Those brave enough to visit their dead were even shot at. Reason: a permanent part of decor at the cemetery was a trench digging machine and a gas bottle. Trench digger was incessantly digging and the gas bottle was used to weld shut the metal coffins in which the murdered and "missing" inhabitants of Sisak had been placed. The coffins were buried in a common grave, to the left from and right next to the cemetery entrance...
Obviously, someone in Sisak had, similarly to the Parliament President Nedeljko Mihanovic, ``obtained reliable information" about cooperation of some of their compatriots with the enemy. That is why they, just like that, ignoring the judicial and investigative process, laws and justice, as if they were the God himself, made decisions about ''traitor's" liquidation, about life and death. The authorities were quiet and remain silent. Because ``the Croatians in this war could not have committed crimes." Even President Tudjman, in his address at the 2nd congress of Croatian Democratic Union (CDU), in trying to convince some of the CDU members from the extreme right to withdraw from running for the leadership posts, mentioned that international institutions and organizations had their names on the lists of suspected war criminals. But then he added that he himself would give them decorations for everything they had done in the war for the defense of Croatia.
The murdered inhabitants of Sisak, however, live in the memories of their loved ones. They have been pleading for justice for years now, for the punishment of the murderers of the innocent. We present a frame from that grim movie.
Making a hole in the window pane, a bullet killed 19 year old Ljubice Solar. It happened on 9/17/91 in Sisak in an apartment on the Mose Pijade Square, hundred or so meters as a crow flies from the Sisak Police Station. The murderer shot furtively, from the darkness. Many facts point out that the shot came from the Police Station window
The curfew had just been introduced in Sisak. Ljubica had just come back from an evening out with a girlfriend and was alone in the apartment. Her boyfriend, Dusko Malovic, also her apartment mate and intended future husband, had left that morning for Sarajevo. The intent behind his journey was to find the apartment for the two of them in Sarajevo. They had actually decided to leave Sisak and move to Sarajevo.
The day before, Ljubica had written in her diary:``Crazy things are happening - war between the Croats and JNA, Serbs in Croatia. People are fleeing from the totally destroyed villages. People are left without their houses, property, livestock; they are loosing everything. They are all scared. The worst thing is the ever larger hatred. I am afraid - for father,mother, uncle, auntie - all my cousins in Glina. Only now I realize how much I love this city and how difficult it is to part with it. I suddenly love its people as well. I do not have a desire to leave. I am afraid of the life there! What will it be like? How shall I get over leaving my mother? I hate everything that is happening! I hate it! Maja is leaving tomorrow for Slovenia and Sanja too; Sinki is gone, Plamenko and Ljubisa; everyone has suddenly disappeared! I have just talked to Maja and Sanja. They were crying... I UNDERSTAND THEM. (signed: Ljubica) Dad, please forgive me for everything I have done to you! Forgive me for being so hard towards you! I love you, I really love you. Remember that for all times! Mother, forgive me for leaving when it is most difficult and for going away for a long time. Please UNDERSTAND, I am leaving looking for a better life, searching for happiness. Pray that I find it!"
Ljubica had talked to her mother Vjera earlier on the evening she was murdered; her mother tried to talk her into coming over to her parent's house instead of spending the night on her own in the apartment. In the end Ljubica stayed in the apartment and her mother was supposed to pick her up the following morning with a car and take her to the house. When the mother, Vjera, phoned the following morning, the receiver was picked up by policemen who, after she had told them she was looking for her daughter, presently arrived to her house. The policemen told her that ``nothing terrible" had happened to her daughter. She was asked to follow them to the Sisak Hospital, with a neighbor, if one happened to be around.
``One of the two policemen went to get my neighbor. She came crying and I knew then that something terrible had happened. But I did not think Ljubica was dead. I thought maybe she was wounded or something like that. The policemen drove us to the hospital and left. There, my colleagues from the Surgical Department, where I have worked for 34 years, gathered around and wanted to give me an injection, which I refused. They took the neighbor to the morgue to confirm that the body was Ljubica's... She came to the door crying:``Oh, Vjera, it is your Ljubica .." Then I went there .. I do not know how I returned home ... A man gave me a lift, since the policemen had left. To this day I do not know why my child was murdered and who killed her, but I saw from the death certificate that was killed on 9/17 at 11:00 pm, right at the curfew's start."
Ljubica Solar was born in Sisak on 5/10/72. After three years of high school she decided to transfer to a school for beauticians. She tried the one in Zagreb, but since they could not transfer her high school credits, she went to live with her uncle in Zemun and there finished the final year of the beauty school. After completed internship she returned to Sisak in July of 1991. Her boyfriend Dusko Malovic was a member of ex-JNA[Yugoslav Peoples Army]. In March of 1991 he left JNA and since he had been more than successful in full-contact ( he had some international trophies), worked as a body guard on Tatjana Matejas Tajci's concerts and as a bouncer in night clubs. After Ljubica's return from Zemun, they lived in an apartment owned by the ex-JNA, for which Dusan had residence rights. Dusko Malovic found out about Ljubica's death on his way to Sarajevo. At first he wanted to return to Sisak for her funeral. He was convinced to stay away as he might have been in danger as well. He died later in the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
Ljubica's father Jovo, a Serb from Banija region, and his son Doko left Sisak that summer. Why did they leave?
``Actually, we still did not know anything, only that people had been disappearing. Oljaca was killed, then Crnobrnja, Vila family... You know, we heard stories, that people were disappearing and that their corpses would be later found floating in Sava; we thought, let the men go, and we women will stay because nobody would touch us. Therefore, my husband at the end of July went to Zemun and son at the beginning of August to Germany; he would have ended up at the front if he had gone to Zemun, which we did not want. At first he [son] did not want to leave Sisak. I insisted every day: ``Doko, c'mon, you have an aunt in Germany, go there, you know I always worry if you will return safely when you go out after dark; I do not sleep until you come back." He left and later told me that several times, when he was returning late in the evening from the city center, he was stopped, up there on the hill, by his ex-classmates and searched for guns. They used to spend days in my house drinking and eating, during weekends... But I was not afraid for the little one... She was such a good child. Dusko was her first boyfriend. She did not go out before that."
Vjera Solar is a Croat. Her mother, a Croat from Boka Kotorska died died during the WWII, and father Josip Braun, a domobran sergeant perished while demining a bridge connecting two sides of Sisak close to the end of the war, in order to stop the Germans from blowing it up during their withdrawal from Yugoslavia. Vjera says:``See, even my son married a Croat woman in Germany last year, Janko Bobetko's cousin. And my daughter was murdered by my Croats. She was buried on Saturday 9/20. Our house was under guard. They were probably waiting to see if her father or brother would show up. The cemetery was also under guard. I was not aware of that, but the others have told me. The police came immediately after the funeral, around 11 o'clock in a Mercedes and took me to the Police Station. I was there until 2. My friends were waiting back in the house. The policemen wanted to know were my husband was, where my son was. I even gave them their phone numbers. I was interrogated two more times. At the beginning of '92 and once more."
Nobody ever contacted Vjera Solar about her daughter's murder. She tried to get some information on her own. She went several times to Duro Brodarac, now the Zupan [Governor] and then the Sisak Police Chief. By the way, Brodarac used to be, until he moved to the city center in 1991, Solar's neighbor, third house from theirs.
``I went to Brodarac. He told me:``Nobody killed her, her boyfriend killed her." I told him:``You are wrong. He could not have killed her. He was on the road then." I did not understand immediately. Later I realized that Ljubica was killed because of her boyfriend. I came to that conclusion and understood why he had been telling me that Dusan had killed her although he [Dusan] had not been there. I still analyze that.. Three and a half years have gone and I still think about the same thing... Who had the right to kill my child? Who had the right? I said that I would not rest in peace until I found out who and why murdered my child. I had my child because I wanted to. When I gave birth to a daughter I was overjoyed... Only to have her murdered nineteen years later... She was allowed to live as long as they gave her... And that was it... That is terrible. I do not care about my life, it does not mean anything to me. I have been alone for four years. I have been fighting all the time. There were provocations. I would get phone calls asking if my house were still in one peace. Why would not have it been? It only stopped after I protested at the local Command."
Vjera Solar tried to find out more through the attorney Silvije Degen's office, Croatian Helsinki Committee, Serb Democratic Forum. But she found out nothing; no one could help her. Duro Brodarac only allowed one visit to the apartment in which her daughter had been murdered.
``I told him that I still had not been to the apartment to pick up her things, and that I had heard a policeman had moved in to the apartment. He told me that I could go and pick up Ljubica's things. The policeman in the apartment was a nice man. He told me to take Ljubica's things. However, I was not allowed to take anything belonging to her boyfriend. The policeman even helped me carry her things to the car. I did not have any problems with him. He even told me he would rather not be in the apartment. I was in the apartment a month after Ljubica's murder; everything was still bloody. The floor was bloody... Even the door was still bloody... I suppose because my poor child had tried to open it... It had not been washed... The bullet hole was still in the window pane... Through which she had been killed... And my daughter, when she was three, used to sleep with Brodarac's daughter. She changed her diapers, fed her, had been to their house so many times. I showed him a photograph of my dead child. And he told me:``I have seen worse." What could had he seen worse than that? Only if his own child had been murdered like that."
Even the organizations and individuals outside Sisak, whose help Vjera Solar sought, could not help. A car with documents about Ljubica Solar's murder, belonging to Croatian Helsinki Committee, was stolen. At the Sisak Police Station, it was suggested to their co-worker inquiring about the case, to avoid getting to curious about it.
We found out about the existence of the two theories. The first one, originating in the Police, states that an ``unknown person shot at Ljubica Solar from the railroad tracks passing nearby the apartment in which she was killed." The other one, which the majority of our contacts found more believable: that the bullet came from the Police Station, which is also very close to the apartment. We asked Ljubica's mother whether she had heard about these two theories.
``Yes, that is what I have heard. No one told me that officially. Actually I have never been told anything officially! I do not have any papers, nothing!"
``Was the autopsy performed?"
``Yes, it was performed. I was told by a pathologist, Dr. Kovacevic. I met him at the cemetery on Sve Svete in 1991. I had not seen him since my daughter's death. He hugged me and then said:``My Vjera, that is the worst crime I have seen in this war." He said that it had not been a bullet but a shot. The intention was to kill her. It ripped everything inside her... I say, I do not want to believe that the Croatian authorities allow these things to take place. But they have not done anything against it. That is the saddest thing of all. I cannot believe in the existence of authorities which would allow that people are killed in such a way. My child did no harm to anyone..."