by Goran TARLAC
Corrected memory: The final verdict was made based on the three statements of the "key witness". In the testimony from 1992 Natasa Bozic was "a woman named Nada" who forced female prisoners to strip in front of men. Two years later, witness Tereza Grgic said that she did not know "the names of Chetniks who tortured us, neither men nor women." However, in 1996 during the main trial hearing Tereza corrected her memory and decidedly confirmed that during the time she spent in the Serb prison in Okucani she was "maltreated by several women, and Natasa Bozic was one of them".
Natasa was charged that "as a member of the SAO Krajina militia she participated in the maltreatment of civilian prisoner Tereza Grgic" in the period between August and September of 1991. The relatives of another witness, Matija Filipovic, were at the time living in Natasa's house in Nova Gradiska. They still live in the same house.
The court in Slavonska Pozega on May 20, 1996 sentenced Natasa Bozic, at the time already married in Banja Luka and with the new surname Jankovic, in absentia to eight years in prison. The judicial panel chaired by judge Predrag Dragicevic added to the eight year sentence that Natasa had to pay expenses amounting to 910 kunas.
Tens of documents and names of individuals who "under full material and legal responsibility" testify that Natasa was not a guard in any Serb prison or camp, in Okucani or anywhere else have been collected by her husband Zoran from Banja Luka. He was simply dumbfounded when his wife was arrested on January 31, 2001 at a border crossing between RS and Croatia in Gradiska. Above all, this three times champion of the Socialist Republic of Croatia in gymnastics, had been before, seven times in total, in Croatia. "They arrested her without any explanation," he says, "and then tried to interrogate her without a lawyer. Since Natasa had completed the Higher Police School in Zagreb before the war, she did not allow such irregularities, so that they then immediately transferred her to serve her sentence in the female prison in Slavosnka Pozega."
Once Natasa is released from prison, Zoran Jankovic intends to sue Croatia to the International Human Rights Court because of a staged trial. After the RS Ministry of Justice reacted on the diplomatic level, since Natasa is a citizen of RS, the Croatian Justice Minister, Stjepan Ivanisevic, promised that Natasa would soon be retried. Her lawyers Igor Iranovic and Ilija Markovinovic do not doubt that Natasa will be acquitted in a new trial, as neither was Natasa a member of any armed unit, nor is there any evidence of that.
Emptying drawers: The arrest of Natasa Jankovic perfectly fits in the increasingly alarming practice of the Croatian Police - Serbs who want to return are given accommodation in prisons! This action of the so-called democratic post-Tudman authorities is turning into a planned campaign in face of increasingly strong demands of Serbs for the return to their homes [in Croatia].
Savo Strbac, the director of the information center "Veritas" from Belgrade confirms that. He says that this organized campaign covers all of Croatia. "At one meeting of expert groups from FR Yugoslavia and Croatia, in late November 2000, which I also attended, Croatian lawyers admitted that their drawers are full of indictments left over from Tudman and the new authorities have decided to bring all the cases to a close," Strbac says for Reporter. That means that all those who have been indicted will be arrested.
According to "Veritas", the Croatian authorities have so far accused 4,396 Serbs of war crimes, out of which 1,349 have been indicted and 554 condemned and sentenced. Before the fall of the HDZ as many as 25,000 cases involving the same number of Serbs, naturally, were processed in Croatia. That means that, apart from cooks and medical staff, almost the whole Serb Army of Krajina, which before the operation "Storm" had about 30,000 soldiers, was accused of crimes.
Even minister Stjepan Ivanisevic admits that all verdicts were reached without due care and "should be analyzed one more time".
93 Serbs are being held in Croatian prisons sentenced to prison sentences between 10 and 15 years in duration, including those to whom the Clemency Law applies and to whom "the Croatian government and international organization guarantee that they will not be arrested if they stay or return to live in Croatia."
Thirty persons were arrested in October 2000, and about ten during the last two months. Once the judge reads the indictment, it usually turns out that besides the defendant it includes another 30-40 names. Recently in eastern Slavonija a Serb working for the Croatian Police was arrested.
At the time of writing of this article S.B. (born in 1954) was arrested in Beli Manastir "due to well-founded suspicion that he committed a war crime" and transported to the District Jail in Osijek.
Balance: One of the last arrested Serbs is Savo Drulovic, who returned to Knin a year and a half ago. He lived with his relatives and a witness accusing him of crimes showed up three days before he was due to return to his house in Zadar. Drulovic went to prison instead of to his house, but on February 2, thanks to truthful testimony of two Croatian policemen, he was acquitted.
The president of the Association of Serbs Expelled from Krajina and Croatia in RS, Petar Dzodan, is convinced that the Croatian authorities want to prevent the return of Serbs with frequent arrests, in order to make sure that the expelled Serbs are not there [in Croatia] during the population census scheduled for April, 2001. That would also prevent [the expelled Serbs] from voting in the forthcoming local elections in June.
Savo Strbac notices that all of this is probably an attempt to establish some sort of psycho-balance, to satisfy the "patriots" who have been disturbed by the investigation of the Gospic group and more recently of Croatian General Mirko Norac, accused of mass crimes against Serbs.