by Zoran ZUZA
The plan is vary clear. Celo wasn't arrested. He was actually put away to the Zenica (rather than Sarajevo) prison, to keep him far away from the prying eyes and ears of the public, and, what's more important, from the microphones of impudently curious media wishing to find out more about the role of wartime Bosniak leaders.
The history is being repeated, but in a more subtle way. A new trial of Delalic in peace and the ruthless wartime liquidation of Musan Topalovic Caco, based on orders of "his uncle" Alija Izetbegovic, boil down essentially to the attempt of the authorities in Sarajevo to preempt the Hague investigators and portray wartime crimes against non-Muslim civilians - which took place everywhere Bosniaks had advantage in numbers and weaponry - as individual outbursts of rebellious members of the former Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Immediately before the arrest, but also much earlier, Celo simply offered himself to the Hague investigators reckoning that it was better, even as a defendant, to end up in the Hague than in one of Bosnian prisons where at any moment a bullet could be accidentally fired in his direction. Celo instinctively feels what international mediators persistently ignore when they talk about changes in Bosnia-Hercegovina: people whom he saw in Alija's presidency or the government during the war have only changed the skin, but not their nature. All of them have inherited from Alija the political role of a victim that needs to be played to the end, at any cost.
Missing transcripts: That is the answer to the question why the leaders of the "democratic" Alliance for Changes hid from the public the fact that on July 25, the Hague Tribunal sent to the authorities in Sarajevo a request to send official transcripts of the meetings of the Presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Commission for the Protection of Constitutional Order held between December 1992 and January 1993. When Slobodna Dalmacija broke that story, former Presidency members, current distinguished rulers, tried to clear their unclean conscience in all possible ways.
That cleansing went in two different directions. Stjepan Kljujic and Nijaz Durakovic in their statements tried to prove that they were mere decorations in the wartime Presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina and a part of the machinery for the making of unanimous decisions. They tried to incriminate Izetbegovic and Ejup Ganic who, according to the two of them, were in charge of everything.
At the same time, Ivo Komsic rather naively tried to clarify the matter to the public by insisting that the Hague investigators were above all interested in the pre-war meetings of the presidency in which he did not participate. However, Komsic's theory, deliberately or not, was demolished by the current secretary of the Presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina Sejdalija Mustafic, who stated that seven transcripts of the meetings held in late 1992 were missing from the archive. This is precisely the time when Mirko Pejanovic, within that rather unenthusiastic Presidency, initiated the campaign to stop further crimes against Sarajevo Serbs and punish individuals who issued orders and committed murders in Kazani and elsewhere in Sarajevo. It remains to be seen how a grenade hit and destroyed precisely those transcripts, and that will remain a secret until at least one of the mentioned Presidency members explains that in the Hague.
Opening crimes: The speedy extradition of three senior Bosniak officers to the Hague and arrest and retrial of Ramiz Delalic Celo, it seems, will not be enough for Zlatko Lagumdzija and Haris Silajdzic, members of Izetbegovic's wartime government, to feed the hungry dragon called the Hague Tribunal. Therefore, it would not be surprising if the authorities in Sarajevo, in their attempt to block new international indictments, on their own reopen the Kazani case, as was hinted by the already mentioned prosecutor, Muhamed Bisic, who stated that the documentation about this case had been already sent back from the Hague to Sarajevo.
That statement was not confirmed by the Tribunal officials, but it is certain that the documentation sent by the Croats to the Hague in connection with the massacre in Grabovica hasn't been returned. That means that infamous Zulfikar-Zuka Alispago, wartime commander of the 6th Corps of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina, who led the attack on that village, then generals Vahid Karavalic and Vehbija Karic, who planned the action, and Sefer Halilovic, who, according to Ramiz Delalic Celo, was informed about the crime and who as the Chief of Staff of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina did nothing to punish the perpetrators, will also appear in the Hague.
It remains to be seen who will be faster: the prosecutor in the Hague or the prosecutor in Sarajevo? If the former ends up being faster, the doors of the Scheveningen prison, so far only ajar, will be wide open for all those who did as they pleased in the wartime Presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH).
"The massacre took place, and direct perpetrators of that massacre are also known. The Military Security Service knows who shot and who did what and who committed murders. There are at least one hundred statements by soldiers who witnessed the massacre. Some of the perpetrators of the crime were in prison. On October 26, 1993, when I was arrested and when more than 500 soldiers were arrested - those who killed in Grabovica were also in prisons. Why were they released?
"Based on the orders of the commander of the First Corps, Vahid Karavelic, the Ninth Motorized Brigade was given the task to send a company sized unit to Jablanica to prepare for an attack. I was told to personally take the unit out of Sarajevo and that we should subordinate ourselves to the commander of the Sixth Corps or Zulfikar Zuka Alispago respectively. Alispago was supposed to be the commander in the area where the unit from my brigade was supposed to attack.
"I took about 120 soldiers. When we arrived to Jablanica, we were greeted by Rifat Bilajac, Zicro Smajevic, who was at the time the commander of the special task unit of the Chiefs of Staff, Vehbija Karic, and a few others.
"The meeting was chaired by Vehbija Karic. He was at the time a member of the Chiefs of Staff. Rifat Bilajac was also at the time a member of the Chiefs of Staff, as well as Zicro. I was later told that Vehbija Karic started the trouble. When he inspected the soldiers he told them: 'If anyone stands in your way, do not waste time - throw them in the Neretva river!' As far as I was concerned, I was told two days later by Zuka to urgently return to Jablanica. He told me that a massacre had taken place. I in a jeep and we went together to Jablanica. There I learned details from my company commander, Malco Rovcanin. He told me that more than 20 people had been killed. It went like this. When Vehbija left, soldiers wanted to take several cows, goats, and some potatoes, belonging to the local Croats, across the river to our refugees, who were hungry and with whom soldiers shared their food. Croats refused. Then one person was killed; he was the first one to refuse to give his cow. Then the soldiers went from one house to another and the massacre happened...
"When Zuka and I returned to his base, he in front of me informed his superiors. I was personally present when Vehbija issued orders to place checkpoints on all exits from Grabovica to make sure that the information about the massacre does not get out. They ordered Zuka to do that and I know that he immediately went to get three men and ordered them to keep everyone, Police, UNPROFOR, journalists, out of the village of Grabovica.
"When I again went to Grabovica, I found two boys. One was perhaps eight, another one nine. They told me that their father, mother, grandmother, grandfather and three-and-a-half-years-old sister had been killed... I put them in a car and took them to Zuka's base in Donja Jablanica.
"I told them everything I had heard from the boys. Sefer Halilovic, Zuka, Vehbija, Zicro, Bilajac, Nihad Bojadzic, Zuka's deputy were all there. Some of them suggested that the boys should be killed, to keep the offensive secret. I was adamant: the boys should be sent to their aunt and uncle and moved to safety. I do not want to say who made such suggestion regarding the boys, because I said that in my statement to the military security department.
"Today, they are trying to blame me. I am not guilty and I have evidence to back that up. Let the investigators from the Hague come, if our local ones don't care. I'll tell them everything! I have all the relevant documentation, orders and instructions in connection with this action. It is clear what the chain of command was, who was in charge of what and who did what. I believe that the responsible individuals in this case are whose who ordered that the soldiers be housed in Croat houses and the person who told them to throw them in the river. Of course the military security service also shares the blame for failing to react once they found about that crime and discovered the perpetrators..."
"I found out about these things (crimes of Caco and his soldiers, Z.Z.'s remark) in the second half of 1992 through members of families who came to report disappearances of their loved ones, and abductions and taking of persons to the front line. I initiated then a meeting of the Council for the Protection of Constitutional Order which was, among other, supposed to address the issue of illegal abductions and taking of civilians to the front line held by the Tenth Mountain Brigade.
"The first meeting took place in the autumn or winter of 1992, and was followed by another meeting. Actually, all together three meetings dealt with the issue of Topalovic's willfulness. Those were extended meetings that included members of political parties and we invited the Minister of Internal Affairs, Jusuf Pusina at the time, to attend them. Other invited individuals included the Chief of Sarajevo Police, members of the Sarajevo bar association, the prosecutor and representatives of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina. I personally, and other members of the Presidency, wanted to open that issue and we did raise it at the second meeting of the Council, when we informed the Presidency about the problem and demanded that the Presidency do something about it. I must say that the problem was then accepted, but there were tactical delays due to the fear that a radical removal of Topalovic or his collaborators could provoke a wider rebellion. Then I prepared a third meeting of the Council for the Protection of the Constitutional Order. I made that meeting public, which is unusual for the meetings of that body. The media reported the discussion at the meeting...
"...There are two estimates. One says that about two thousand persons perished in Sarajevo. According to the other one, the actual number is three thousand. Some of the murders were carried out like this: you take an unprepared civilian to the front line and order him to dig. You leave him in the open and then shoot at the other side. They shoot back and kill the civilian. Then, that is not listed as a murder, as a crime, but as a 'death on the front line'..."