Impotent Rage

How can the Court fail to fulfill its constitutional obligation and deny to citizens, Albanian citizens from Belgrade, their elementary right, the right to justice?

by Duska ANASTASIJEVIC

Vreme, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, December 7, 2000

Last May, during the state of war, thanks to the TV Serbia program "Current events" the public found out that the Police had discovered and arrested terrorists from the group "Shkumbimi" (a river in Albania), which was active within the "Popular Movement of Kosovo". The KLA was the armed wing of the "Popular Movement of Kosovo". The "terrorist-commando" group included Belgrade University students, Albanians from Kosovo, brothers Petrit and Driton Berisha, Driton Meqa, Shkodran Derguti, and Abdulah Isam, and the owner of a jewelry store in Knez Mihajlova street, Zef Paluca. Had not the Police in time prevented these "student-terrorists", as was emphasized in the indictment and the mentioned TV program, they would have most likely blown up the Main Post Office, civilian bomb shelters, and the Police Academy causing many civilian casualties, including the audience and participants of the daily concerts at the Republic Square. Belgraders could relax and the Police had its triumph. Somewhat before the court handed down a verdict in July 2000, more than a year after the arrests, the Albanian students were condemned by the Minister of Internal Affairs (Police), Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who drew attention to the police action as an example of good police work on the protection of Belgraders from terrorism during the NATO bombardment. All the members of the incriminated group, except for Paluca, who had left the country at the very beginning of the NATO bombardment, have been kept for more than a year and half in solitary confinement in the Central Prison in Belgrade. The judge of the District Court in Belgrade, Dragisa Slijepcevic, declared the six of them (Paluca was tried in absentia) guilty of a grave crime of terrorism, charges shared by most Albanian prisoners in Serbia. Petrit Berisha received the harshest sentence of 12 years in prison for a qualified terrorist act, because he as an alleged KLA member in July and August 1998 participated in the actions against the Serbian police in Kosovo. According to the indictment, several policemen were killed in those actions. Berisha is also accused of abducting, bestially torturing, and murdering police captain Srdjan Perovic, who perished near the village of Loda in the Pec region in the summer of 1998. The key evidence for such serious accusations is exactly the program "Current affairs" in which the brothers Berisha and Driton Meqa confessed the crimes in front of cameras. Petrit Berisha confessed that he had participated in the horrible crime against policeman Srdjan Perovic. However, at the time both the public and the journalist Vladimir Nikolic did not know, as became obvious during the trial, that these confessions were not given voluntarily, but in the presence of plain clothes policemen who made sure that the "confessions" went smoothly and without too much stuttering. Neither the public nor journalist Nikolic knew that the five Albanians had previously been in custody and that their confessions had been forced with by beatings and torture. However, during the trial, judge Slijepcevic found out about these facts, but decided to accept as the only relevant evidence the statements of the defendants given in Police custody, i.e. before the criminal procedure was initiated, while they were exposed to psychological and physical maltreatment, and had no contact with lawyers. Petrit Berisha related during the trial that at one point policemen took them outside in front of a shooting squad and openly threatened to kill them because they were "Albanian terrorists". According to Petrit Berisha's defense counsel, Ivan Jankovic, this case is a classical example of a staged trial and the students are victims of the frustration of Milosevic's regime caused by their inability to strike back at real culprits and the NATO aircraft. "It was important to the Police to prove that it was successfully working on ambitious projects and discovering enemies. During the state of war they could not successfully destroy the enemy that was either too high above or too far, as those Kosovo Albanians who really used violent methods. Albanian students in Belgrade are victims of that impotence and frustration," Jankovic says for Vreme. "Petrit did go home in the summer of 1998. He spent his summer vacation in Pec. However, we presented witnesses who confirmed that he was in Pec all the time. He even on the return from Pec passed a difficult exam and got an excellent grade, which would be very strange for someone who had spent the vacation in the mountains and had undergone military training at that time," says Jankovic. However, the students' twilight zone does not end there. Although it's been five months since the verdict was handed down, judge Slijepcevic still hasn't found time to write the verdict, although law gives him at most fifteen days to do so. In practice that means that the defendants remain in solitary confinement but that the defense does not have the right to appeal the verdict to the higher court, in this case the Supreme Court of Serbia. The defense attorneys have persistently urged the judge to comply with the law, but he still refuses to do so. "It does happen that a judge does not write the verdict for a few weeks," says lawyer Jankovic, "but this is one of the most blatant violations of law that I know of." Even more drastic example of the violation of the legal deadline is the case of the so-called "Urosevac group", which was tried in Prizren in early February 1999. Some of fifteen Albanians from Urosevac were sentenced to 15 years in prison, but had to wait for the written verdict for two years. They were tried by judge Pavle Vukasinovic, who also conducted the trial of the group "Pauk" [spider], and later became a member of the Federal Election Commission and the Supreme Court of Serbia. "Indicted Albanians from Urosevac were then sentenced for the crime that had been committed after they had been arrested," says for Vreme lawyer Dragoljub Todorovic, who is frequently hired by the Belgrade non-governmental organization the Humanitarian Law Fund to defend Kosovo Albanians in political trials. Lawyer Jankovic says that during his visit to Berisha he found out that his health and psychological state were surprisingly good having in mind the conditions and uncertainty in which he lives. Petrit Berisha, otherwise a final year student of the Veterinarian department of the Belgrade University, hopes to pass in prison the last exam he needs to graduate. His professor agreed to examine him in prison, but judge Slijepcevic's permission is needed for that as well. "These five students are members of an endangered species, Albanians loyal to Serbia, who planned to continue their life in Belgrade," adds lawyer Jankovic. "Because of the behavior of the court and judge Slijepcevic, that species is on the way to becoming extinct."

Translated on December 27, 2000