Bukovica engleski.qxd - Fond za humanitarno pravo
Bukovica engleski.qxd - Fond za humanitarno pravo
Bukovica engleski.qxd - Fond za humanitarno pravo
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<strong>Bukovica</strong> <strong>engleski</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 15.3.2003 13:53 Page 1<br />
Documents Series<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Humanitarian Law Center
<strong>Bukovica</strong> <strong>engleski</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 15.3.2003 13:53 Page 2<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Table of Contents<br />
Introduction 5<br />
1. Political Situation in Montenegro 7<br />
2. Paramilitary Groups 11<br />
2.1. Disarming paramilitary groups 13<br />
3. Pljevlja 14<br />
3.1. Radical rebellion 16<br />
3.2. Explosions 18<br />
3.3. Dačević indictment 20<br />
3.3.1. Dačević trial 22<br />
4. Propaganda Against<br />
Montenegrin Muslims 25<br />
5. <strong>Bukovica</strong> at the Beginning of the War<br />
in Bosnia-Herzegovina 28<br />
5.1. Murders in Vitine 32<br />
5.2. Expulsion from Rosulje 36<br />
5.3. Physical and Mental Abuse<br />
of the Kaims 39<br />
5.4. The murder of Hajro and Ejub Muslić 42<br />
5.5. November house searches 43<br />
5.5.1.The death of Himzo Stovrag 43<br />
5.5.2The beating of Jakub Durgut 45<br />
5.5.3. Arrested and imprisoned 46<br />
5.5.3.1. Flight to Goražde 48<br />
5.5.3.2. Elderly couple beaten 50
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
6. Muslim Offensive on Čajniče 52<br />
7. Hostages Taken in Ravni Village 57<br />
7.1. Razija Bungur: ”They said they were<br />
Chetniks“ 57<br />
7.2. Zlatija Bungur: ”Alema started<br />
walking in prison“ 58<br />
7.3. Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur: ”They sent me to<br />
Goražde to parley.“ 62<br />
7.4. Mamko Bungur: ”Mother said<br />
we would soon be exchanged.“ 62<br />
7.5. Sevda Bungur: ”I heard a shot and<br />
immediately thought to myself that<br />
Latif had been killed.“ 65<br />
7.6. The murder of Latif Bungur 67<br />
8. The Terror Continues 71<br />
8.1. The death of Hilmo Drkenda 76<br />
8.2. Dekare 77<br />
9. Epilogue 80<br />
10. Homes Torched To Prevent Return 82<br />
11. Mosques Destroyed 84<br />
Appendix 1<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> Refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina 86<br />
Appendix 2<br />
HLC Spotlight Report No. 4, May 1993 102
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Dedicated to the victims of ethnic and religious persecution
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Introduction<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> is a rural area situated in Montenegro’s Pljevlja<br />
municipality. It spreads on 140 square kilometers of<br />
highland country covered with woods, orchards and<br />
meadows, cut by crystal clear streams, and is bounded<br />
on three sides, to a length of 104 kilometers, by the<br />
Yugoslav border with Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is sparsely<br />
populated, with 37 small hamlets and lone homesteads<br />
scattered on the mountain slopes. The community center<br />
is located in Kovačevići village on the edge of which<br />
are buildings housing the community office, elementary<br />
school, post office, medical clinic, the homes of the<br />
teachers and administrative workers and, since mid-<br />
1991, the local police station. Kovačevići is 75 kilometers<br />
from the town of Pljevlja, the administrative center<br />
of the municipality, and some of its outlying hamlets up<br />
to 85 kilometers away. Twenty-nine of the hamlets were<br />
all-Muslim: Tvrdakovići, Rosulje, Raščići, Hromac, Sirčići,<br />
Selišta, Gunjičići, Borišići, Klakorine, Borjanica, Kržava,<br />
Mrčići, Rujevica, Geuši, Budijevići, Madžari, Ograda,<br />
Vukšići, Čerjenci, Djenovići, Stražice, Brdo, Plansko,<br />
Močevići, Kruševci, Bunguri, Kava, Ravni and Hajlovine.<br />
Serbs and Montenegrins lived in Srečanje, Meljena,<br />
Rudići, Krčevina, Brda and Piperi while Kovačevići and<br />
Lugovi had populations from all these groups. According<br />
to the 1991 census, the municipality had 39,593 people,<br />
of whom 21,916 Montenegrins, 9,529 Serbs and<br />
6,964 Muslims, with Yugoslavs, Croats, Macedonians<br />
and others making up the remainder. The <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
hamlets had a total population of about 1,500 souls,<br />
with Muslims accounting for 65% to 70%.<br />
With the outbreak of armed conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
in 1992, <strong>Bukovica</strong> Serbs and Montenegrins, like<br />
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those in the rest of Montenegro, were mobilized into<br />
the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and, for the first time, a military<br />
command post was set up in Kovačevići. Members of<br />
Bosnian Serb armed units easily crossed the porous<br />
border and both they and the VJ treated the <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Muslims as the enemy. Muslim homes were searched for<br />
alleged illegal weapons, families were robbed of their<br />
money and valuables, men were beaten and threatened<br />
with death unless they moved out. All this and a number<br />
of murders forced the <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims to flee. In just<br />
two consecutive days, 15 and 16 February 1993, Bosnian<br />
Serb army members took hostage 11 members of the<br />
Bungur family to obtain from them information on the<br />
involvement of Montenegrin Muslims in the Bosnian<br />
Muslim military offensive at Čajniče (Bosnia) on 14 February,<br />
and to exchange them for Bosnian Serbs taken<br />
prisoner. Six elderly male members of the family<br />
returned on 21 March and five others, two women and<br />
three children, were exchanged for two Bosnian Serb<br />
civilians from Goražde on 23 May 1993.<br />
By March 1993, there were 152 displaced <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims<br />
in Pljevlja town. The remaining families left the<br />
area during that year and the next. Hoping that the situation<br />
would soon calm down and make it possible for<br />
them to go back home, some of them moved in with relatives<br />
in Pljevlja. Those who had passports left Montenegro<br />
for third countries. The majority, however,<br />
afraid for their lives and without passports, decided to<br />
go by foot through the woods and forests and cross into<br />
Bosnian Muslim-held territory.<br />
Reporting the abduction of the <strong>Bukovica</strong> villagers a<br />
few days after the event, the Montenegrin weekly Monitor<br />
strongly suggested that it was part of Belgrade’s<br />
policy of creating an ethnically pure strip of land along<br />
the Montenegrin-Bosnian border. The Montenegrin
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Liberal Party accused the republic’s government of<br />
complicity in the expulsion of Muslims from the area<br />
by failing to prevent the terror against them. The<br />
Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) was subsequently<br />
able to locate an eyewitness of the 16 February kidnapping<br />
and to speak with some 20 displaced <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Muslims in Pljevlja. The HLC report based on their testimony<br />
was carried in entirety by the Belgrade daily<br />
Naša Borba and is reprinted in this publication. With<br />
the help of their relatives and friends in Pljevlja, the<br />
HLC during 2000 and 2001 reached most of the victims<br />
and witnesses of the terror in <strong>Bukovica</strong>. The majority<br />
now live in Goražde or Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina,<br />
and some died soon after fleeing <strong>Bukovica</strong> of<br />
injuries due to severe beating.<br />
This publication is dedicated to the victims of persecution<br />
on ethnic and religious grounds in <strong>Bukovica</strong>. The<br />
aim of the HLC is to bring out the truth about events in<br />
the recent past, initiate a broad-based debate on<br />
accountability, and restore the human dignity of the victims.<br />
It is clear from what happened in <strong>Bukovica</strong> that<br />
there was a plan to create an ethnically pure territory,<br />
and that the Yugoslav Army and Serbian Radical Party<br />
(SRS) were directly involved in carrying it out. For its<br />
part, the Montenegrin government did nothing to prevent<br />
or stop the persecution and expulsion of the<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims.<br />
1. Political Situation in Montenegro<br />
Prior to and at the beginning of the war in Bosnia-<br />
Herzegovina, towns in northern Montenegro were<br />
rocked by explosions: Muslim-owned stores and houses<br />
were being blown up. The state media in Montenegro<br />
stayed silent on this but featured many an article alleg-<br />
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ing that the Muslim population of Montenegro was illegally<br />
arming itself in preparation for a rebellion.<br />
Following a series of rallies in Serbia notable for his<br />
threats against Croats and other minorities, SRS leader<br />
Vojislav Šešelj took this same rhetoric into Montenegro.<br />
Speaking at an election rally on 25 April 1992 in Podgorica,<br />
he was cheered enthusiastically by about 10,000<br />
supporters. Security men at this rally were in camouflage<br />
fatigues and armed with automatic rifles. Šešelj<br />
explained to his audience that the concept of a rump<br />
Yugoslavia had been accepted in order to more easily<br />
ensure the primary goal - that of all Serbs living in one<br />
state. He accused the ”external enemies“ (Germany, the<br />
United States and European Community) and ”internal<br />
enemies“ (Serbian Renewal Movement, Democratic<br />
Party and Montenegro’s Liberal Alliance) of wanting<br />
first to declare the independence of Serbia and Montenegro<br />
and of now creating anarchy and chaos and<br />
preventing democratic consolidation. ”That’s why<br />
everyone who belongs to Serbdom must go to the<br />
polls,“ he exclaimed. 1 Šešelj lashed out again against the<br />
”traitorous generals“ (Veljko Kadijević, Milutin Kukanjac,<br />
Stane Brovet and others) for not ”liberating Serb<br />
lands by now“ and promised them courts-martial and<br />
shooting squads. Responding to cries from supporters<br />
that they would kill the Albanians, he said, obviously<br />
alluding to the some 10,000 ethnic Albanians who did<br />
not boycott the 1991 census, ”No, we like those Shiptars.<br />
2 They are our brothers and we shall take good care<br />
of them. But I predict for all disloyal Shiptars, Croats,<br />
Muslims and others a journey over the Prokletije.“ 3<br />
1 ”That’s Why Everyone Who Belongs to Serbdom Must Go to the<br />
Polls,“ Borba, Belgrade, 26 April 1992.<br />
2 Serbian derogatory for Albanian.<br />
3 Mountain range on the Yugoslav-Albanian border.
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
As the rally was drawing to its end, Adem Šabotić, a 60year-old<br />
Montenegrin Muslim, threw a hand grenade at<br />
Šešelj. Sixty-one people, including the SRS leader, were<br />
slightly injured in the explosion. Šabotić, who had several<br />
prior criminal convictions, was arrested and, admitting<br />
the act, said: ”I did it because I’m sick and tired of<br />
Šešelj.“ 4 Searching Šabotić’s house, police found three<br />
automatic rifles, a machine-gun, three hand grenades,<br />
and a large quantity of ammunition.<br />
The Liberal Alliance was the first Montenegrin political<br />
party to condemn the attempt on Šešelj’s life in spite of<br />
him having consistently labeled them ”traitors.“ But, at<br />
the same time, it said the act was the result of the Montenegrin<br />
authorities’ ”benevolent attitude toward the<br />
spreading of Chetnik 5 ideology in this republic.“ 6 The<br />
other Montenegrin parties denounced the assassination<br />
attempt as an act of terrorism. The Reformist<br />
Alliance of the Montenegrin Coastlands said in its press<br />
release that ”this, like any other act of terrorism, is a<br />
provocation and a call for all-out terrorism and civil war<br />
in Montenegro.“ 7<br />
„Is Šabotić the extended arm of the Green Berets 8 and<br />
does this incident confirm the increasing rumors that<br />
Alija’s 9 group has reached Montenegro too? Officials are<br />
unwilling to say anything specific. But from what is<br />
4 ”Would-be Assassin Adem Šabotić,“ Borba, Belgrade, 27 April 1992.<br />
5 Member of the Serbian Army during the Balkan Wars, later used to<br />
denote members of extremist paramilitary groups.<br />
6 ”Grenade Against Vojvoda,“ Borba, Belgrade, 27 April 1992.<br />
7 Ibid.<br />
8 Bosnian Muslim paramilitary group, later incorporated into the<br />
Bosnian Army.<br />
9 Alija Izetbegović, leader of the Bosnian Muslim Party of Democratic<br />
Action and later President of Bosnia-Herezegovina.<br />
9
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known and what was discovered in Šabotić’s possession,<br />
it can be said that we have here a serious organi<strong>za</strong>tion<br />
which is preparing acts of terrorism,“ the Belgrade<br />
daily Večernje Novosti wrote. 10<br />
In a call-in show on Montenegrin TV, the Montenegrin<br />
president of the day, Momir Bulatović, deplored ”the terrorist<br />
attack“ and said ”only madmen are prepared to do<br />
something like this.“ 11 Bulatović warned of the danger of<br />
the mounting speculations following the incident. With<br />
regard to opposition accusations that the republican government<br />
was turning a blind eye to Šešelj’s rhetoric and<br />
instigation of rebellion in Montenegro, Bulatović denied<br />
rumors that the Radical leader had threatened ”a terrible<br />
revenge“ against his assailants. He added that Šešelj had<br />
in a conversation with him ”paid tribute“ to the Montenegrin<br />
police for their quick arrest of the would-be assassin.<br />
12 Bulatović expressed strong support for the Montenegrin<br />
authorities, saying they were capable of maintaining<br />
peace in the republic.<br />
For his part, Šešelj continued in the same vein. At a rally<br />
in Raška, Serbia, he threatened Muslims: ”Should there<br />
be barricades or some kind of Muslim rebellion in the<br />
Sandžak, our volunteers, soldiers proven in combat, will<br />
be there right away and the Muslims will have to think<br />
hard what to do and where to go! They’ll run all the way<br />
to Anatolia. Let the Muslims know that the fiercest Islamic<br />
fanatics from Novi Pa<strong>za</strong>r, Sjenica and Tutin have<br />
already been killed as Croatian mercenaries and Izetbegović’s<br />
soldiers in Bosnia.“ 13<br />
10 ”Šabotić Is Not Alone,“ Večernje Novosti, Belgrade, 27 April 1992.<br />
11 ”Grenade Against Vojvoda,“ Borba, Belgrade, 27 April 1992.<br />
12 Ibid.<br />
13 ”Šešelj: We Would Make Short Shrift of a Muslim Rebellion,“<br />
Politika, Belgrade, 17 May 1992.
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2. Paramilitary Groups<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
As VJ troops and reservists and various paramilitary<br />
groups stormed into cafes, ill-treated the customers,<br />
especially if they were Muslims, torched Muslim-owned<br />
property, and shot off their guns in the streets, the<br />
atmosphere in northern Montenegro increasingly<br />
became one of war. In May 1992, leader of the Montenegrin<br />
Muslims’ Party of Democratic Action Harun Hadžić<br />
said Muslims were moving out under pressure by the VJ<br />
and paramilitary Chetnik groups. He cited as an example<br />
the Rožaje area from where 1,000 Muslims had fled<br />
in the span of only two months. Saying that the reporting<br />
of Serbian and Montenegrin media was turning<br />
Serbs against Muslims, Hadžić warned: ”The media are<br />
doing a lot of harm and a creating an atmosphere in<br />
which people might out of fear make some wrong<br />
moves. Stories that we are working hand in hand with<br />
Ugljanin 14 who will supposedly attack the Serb population<br />
have no foundation at all. No one wants any conflicts<br />
in this region - neither the Serbian nor the Montenegrin<br />
authorities, nor we Muslims. We would be<br />
defeated militarily and the Army, which already treats us<br />
mercilessly, would have no compassion toward us: it<br />
would be total annihilation.“ 15<br />
In May 1992, President Bulatović visited Pljevlja, which<br />
had become a center for Šešelj’s Radicals and Chetnik<br />
groups and, for the first time, publicly mentioned the<br />
existence of paramilitaries in Montenegro. Meeting<br />
with municipal officials, Bulatović said the presence of<br />
armed men other than police and the military in Mon-<br />
14 Sulejman Ugljanin, leader of the Muslim Party of Democratic<br />
Action in the Sandžak.<br />
15 ”Leaden Fear Bears Down,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 8 My 1992.<br />
11
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tenegrin towns was impermissible, and that they had to<br />
be disarmed. 16<br />
Up until then the Montenegrin government had<br />
claimed that there were no paramilitary groups in the<br />
republic. That there were became evident at the Pljevlja<br />
meeting when President Bulatović criticized the authorities<br />
for failing to disarm paramilitaries. The weekly<br />
Monitor reported that the republic’s Minister of Internal<br />
Affairs did not deny that some ”strange army“ had<br />
passed through the town under police escort. 17 He<br />
admitted it had been agreed that the passage through<br />
Pljevlja of this outfit would be swift. He further said it<br />
was impossible to completely ”disarm citizens who like<br />
guns, in fact it is dangerous because people, including<br />
paramilitaries, are reluctant to give up their weapons.“<br />
The weekly noted that the minister avoided saying<br />
which outfit had been involved. 18<br />
Who made up these paramilitary groups was indirectly<br />
revealed by VJ General Milan Djokić, the commanding<br />
officer of the Pljevlja garrison. Saying that it was not the<br />
Army which had betrayed the people but vice versa, 19<br />
General Djokić announced that ”under great pressure<br />
by citizens,“ he would start ”handing out arms to those<br />
who are prepared to defend the country.“ 20 Although<br />
President Bulatović told the general that weapons could<br />
distributed only by a decision of the High Defense<br />
Council, Montenegrins wondered what were the criteria<br />
for being considered trustworthy enough to be<br />
issued with arms and whether their government was<br />
16 ”Security Without Protection,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 15 May 1992.<br />
17 Ibid.<br />
18 Ibid.<br />
19 Ibid.<br />
20 Ibid
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
really in control of the situation. The Muslim population<br />
became increasingly anxious and fearful.<br />
Reacting to a report in Monitor 21 on the lawlessness and<br />
rampaging of the paramilitaries, blowing up of Muslim<br />
property in Pljevlja, and the local authorities’ refusal to<br />
respond to questions by the press, Pljevlja Police Chief<br />
Milan Paunović and the security chief for Pljevlja and<br />
Žabljak municipalities, Radoman Purić, called a news conference<br />
to deny the ”allegations of some media.“ Paunović<br />
and Purić claimed that all citizens enjoyed equal protection<br />
and that the law enforcement agencies were investing<br />
maximum efforts to ensure the safety of all.<br />
2.1. Disarming paramilitary groups<br />
In late July 1992, the Yugoslav High Defense Council,<br />
Montenegrin Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Second<br />
Army Command took a decision to disarm all paramilitary<br />
groups. At a cafe in Pljevlja on 15 and 16 August,<br />
SRS member and Chetnik Vojvoda 22 Milika ”Čeko“ Dačević<br />
had his men turn over their weapons. A few old M-<br />
48 rifles and a number of trophy weapons were handed<br />
in, with TV cameras and photojournalists memorializing<br />
the ”spectacular arms surrender.“<br />
The federal government and the High Defense Council<br />
dispatched the Special Forces of the Federal Ministry of<br />
Internal Affairs to Pljevlja in the summer of that year to<br />
disarm the paramilitaries and obviate inter-ethnic conflicts.<br />
Its commanding officer, Milorad Davidović, said<br />
that there were those in both the Montenegrin and Muslim<br />
communities who were not pleased with the pres-<br />
21 ”Investigation Is Underway,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 18 July 1992.<br />
22 Vojvoda, highest rank in the Serbian Army at the time of World War I.<br />
13
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ence of these ”strangers, but when push came to shove<br />
people realized that these guys together with the VJ<br />
were ensuring peace for them.“ Davidović on several<br />
occasions said publicly that volunteers ”with extreme<br />
nationalistic sentiments and armed to the teeth“ were<br />
coming from the war zones in Bosnia. 23 Writing about<br />
the presence of the federal police force, Monitor reported:<br />
”People say that the situation went back to normal<br />
when one group of special police was there but worsened<br />
with the arrival of another. They noticed these<br />
new Special Forces men keeping company with those<br />
who spread fear in Pljevlja and even joining them in<br />
shooting off their weapons when drunk.“ 24<br />
3. Pljevlja<br />
The closest towns to Pljevlja municipality across the<br />
Bosnian border are Čajniče, Goražde and Foča. The<br />
atmosphere of war from Bosnia soon spilled over into<br />
this Montenegrin municipality and, as it had done earlier<br />
with the dominantly Serb Krajina region in Croatia<br />
and parts of Vojvodina populated by ethnic Croats and<br />
Hungarians, the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) left<br />
Montenegro to the SRS. The Radicals in border areas<br />
with Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina liked to describe<br />
themselves as ”guards of the frontiers of Serbdom and<br />
committed combatants for the Serb cause.“<br />
The attacks on Pljevlja Muslims led the Montenegrin<br />
government to question the Serbian doctrine, which in<br />
turn raised the issue of Montenegro’s loyalty to Serbia.<br />
Following instructions from Belgrade, the Montenegrin<br />
authorities had participated in creating an irregular<br />
23 ”Investigation Is Underway,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 18 July 1992..<br />
24 ”Agony Prolonged,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 24 July 1992.
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political situation in the north of their republic. Thus<br />
Montenegrin Liberal Alliance election rallies in November<br />
1992 were banned in many places. As Monitor editor-in-chief<br />
Miodrag Perović wrote: ”The partial political<br />
isolation of northern Montenegro has increased the<br />
possibility of a civil war breaking out in that area. Chetnik<br />
gangs with the help of corrupt police and VJ soldiers<br />
will attempt to trigger it.“ 25<br />
This kind of atmosphere was generated mainly by the<br />
leaders of the SRS in Serbia and Montenegro, Vojislav<br />
Šešelj and Mirko Jović, who, on the pretext of opposing<br />
Montenegrin separatism and secession, exacerbated<br />
the problems between the two republics and encouraged<br />
the upsurge of nationalism.<br />
Soon after the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina broke out,<br />
armed Bosnian Serbs, wounded, and refugee women<br />
and children began arriving in Pljevlja. More and more<br />
Muslim-owned stores were blown up and the situation<br />
became so serious that the then Yugoslav President<br />
Dobrica Ćosić came to the town in late July together<br />
with President Bulatović. Speaking of the destruction of<br />
Muslim property, the municipality’s Mayor Momčilo<br />
Bojović said that ”a belated Serb national romanticism is<br />
at work and is being expressed in ways that no one<br />
likes.“ 26 In an attempt to evenly distribute the blame,<br />
Bulatović for the first time mentioned ”eighty or so<br />
young men from this area who are in the Green<br />
Berets.“ 27 Meeting with the President of the Pljevlja<br />
Islamic Community, Hakija Ajanović, President Ćosić<br />
said: ”There are different kinds of Chetnik groups,<br />
White Eagles, men whose motives are crime and plun-<br />
25 ”In Milošević’s Jaws,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 27 November 1992.<br />
26 ”Tell Us, Mr President,“ NIN, Belgrade, 21 August 1992.<br />
27 Ibid.<br />
15
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der, who are crossing the Drina. 28 But I want to assure<br />
you that we are doing everything possible to disarm<br />
them.“ Ćosić called on Ajanović to assume his share of<br />
responsibility ”for the wicked things the other side is<br />
doing here and on the other side of the Drina.“ 29<br />
The Serbian and Montenegrin media featured almost<br />
daily reports on the military and police finding illegal<br />
weapons cached by Muslims. But they failed to carry a<br />
press statement released by the Montenegrin Ministry<br />
of Internal Affairs on 24 criminal offenses committed in<br />
the 1 January-15 August 1992 period: property blown<br />
up, hand grenades thrown, and gunfire endangering<br />
the public. The owners of the destroyed property were<br />
”mainly Muslims with the exception of two cases involving<br />
mixed marriages.“ 30<br />
3.1. Radical rebellion<br />
Events in Pljevlja peaked on 6 August 1992 when traffic<br />
police stopped a white Mercedes which was being driven<br />
by one Vuković. Finding that the driver had no<br />
papers on the provenance of the vehicle apart from one<br />
issued by the mayor of Čajniče saying that it was a gift<br />
to Milika ”Čeko“ Dačević as a token of gratitude for his<br />
assistance in the war, the police took Vuković into custody.<br />
A closer look at the car brought out that its license<br />
plates were fake. When Dačević came to the Police<br />
Department the next morning demanding that the Mercedes<br />
be returned to him, he was detained for an investigatory<br />
interrogation in connection with the vehicle as<br />
well as a number of charges pressed against him earlier.<br />
28 Drina River, most of whose course constitutes the border between<br />
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.<br />
29 Tell Us, Mr President,“ NIN, Belgrade, 21 August 1992.<br />
30 Ibid.
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These included the beating up of a Muslim, Muhamed<br />
Hrastovina, in a local cafe two days before, and several<br />
instances of disorderly behavior, resisting police officers<br />
in the performance of their duty, endangering the<br />
public with gunfire. Hearing that Dačević was being<br />
detained, people started gathering outside the Police<br />
Department, chanting slogans in his support. By the<br />
evening, the crowd was 500-strong and barricades<br />
manned by uniformed men had been erected around<br />
the town. About 20 wounded in the Pljevlja hospital<br />
stopped taking food and medication in protest against<br />
Dačević’s detention.<br />
Dačević was released around midnight. Addressing the<br />
cheering crowd amid the sound of celebratory gunfire,<br />
he said: ”If they hadn’t let me go, there would have been<br />
war in the Sandžak.“ 31<br />
The next day, Montenegro’s Minister of Internal Affairs<br />
Nikola Pejaković came to Pljevlja to call to account the<br />
police officers who had released Dačević and failed to disperse<br />
the Radical crowd. Some officers were given three<br />
days to choose a place in Montenegro to where they wanted<br />
to be reassigned or be dismissed. This measure was<br />
announced somewhat earlier by Montenegrin Premier<br />
Milo Djukanović to deal with the problem of unprofessional<br />
police in other cities. Djukanović said then that<br />
robust measures would be implemented since there were<br />
indications that the orders of the High Defense Council<br />
were not being carried out. 32 President Bulatović arrived<br />
in Pljevlja for the second time in ten days to discuss the<br />
unrest and measures that had to be taken with representatives<br />
of political parties and the police authorities.<br />
31 ”How Čeko Occupied Pljevlja,“ Politika, Belgrade, 30 December<br />
1994.<br />
32 ”The State Guarantees Security,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 8 August 1992.<br />
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On 8 August, however, the suspended police officers<br />
staged a hunger strike outside the Police Department<br />
and were joined by some Pljevljans. Shortly afterwards,<br />
Dačević appeared and demanded that the suspended<br />
police be reinstated by 5 p.m. and threatened<br />
to come back with armed men unless this was done. 33<br />
When his ultimatum was not met by the deadline he<br />
had set, more and more Radicals began congregating<br />
in Pljevlja. Barricades were soon erected on access<br />
roads and the buildings of the post office, State<br />
Accounting Bureau, the Town Hall, radio station were<br />
blocked off and phone lines cut. One of Dačević’s<br />
men took over the local bakery and ordered the manager<br />
and staff to bake enough bread for 10,000 of his<br />
men. The bakery turned out 2,500 kilos of bread that<br />
night. Dačević’s Radicals, in camouflage fatigues and<br />
armed with automatic and semi-automatic weapons<br />
and hand grenades, kept Pljevlja under blockade for<br />
10 hours. According to eyewitnesses, there were about<br />
800 armed civilians in the town that night and tension<br />
was running very high.<br />
3.2. Explosions<br />
On the night of 26/27 August, a blaze ripped through a<br />
shopping center in which five Muslims and one Albanian<br />
had their stores. The Pljevlja Muslims accused Bosnian<br />
Serb refugees of setting the fire. Dačević had his<br />
own version: ”The Muslims, pardon me, Turks, are<br />
doing it themselves so as to keep the tension as high as<br />
possible.“ 34 Pljevlja was at the time flooded with<br />
refugees from Bosnia, Serbs as well as Muslims, mainly<br />
women, children and elderly men. Local Serbs and<br />
33 ”Grenade Thrown at Store,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 9 August 1992.<br />
34 ”Pljevlja on Fire,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 28 August 1992.
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Montenegrins claimed that the husbands, brothers and<br />
fathers of these refugees were fighting in Bosnia together<br />
with the Green Berets.<br />
Gutted remains of Muslim-owned businesses in Pljevlja<br />
(photo: 1992)<br />
General Radomir Damjanović, Chief of Staff of the Second<br />
Military District, fanned suspicions as to the loyalty<br />
of the Muslim population. Saying he was speaking as an<br />
engineer by profession, the general expressed his conviction<br />
that the fire had been staged and said flames<br />
appeared first and set of a gas explosion. 35 He quoted<br />
eyewitnesses as saying a large quantity of goods, in particular<br />
expensive, had been removed from the stores<br />
the day before the fire, and said it was curious that most<br />
35 ”Accusations, Etc.,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 1 September 1992.<br />
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explosions in cafes had occurred at about 5 p.m., a time<br />
when they could be expected to have customers, but<br />
that no one had been hurt. Farfetched rumors circulated,<br />
including that a fund had been set up in Novi Pa<strong>za</strong>r<br />
to compensate shop-owners who torched their own<br />
businesses.<br />
In a report on the fire, Monitor quoted a citizen of Pljevlja<br />
as saying: ”About a dozen young men were working<br />
with explosives when a military patrol came along, but<br />
they didn’t prevent the arson even though they had<br />
been tipped off about it.“ Accusing General Damjanović<br />
of making absurd statements and Pobjeda of carrying<br />
them without any reservations, Monitor noted that the<br />
destruction of the stores had left more than 30 Pljevlja<br />
Muslims without a livelihood and the town without a<br />
watch repairman. 36<br />
The Montenegrin authorities finally realized that Čeko<br />
Dačević had become a major problem and the Prosecutor’s<br />
Office filed criminal charges against him. SRS<br />
leader Vojislav Šešelj promptly promoted Dačević to<br />
deputy in the Federal Parliament and thus provided him<br />
with legislative immunity.<br />
3.3. Dačević indictment<br />
On 18 January 1993, an indictment containing a number<br />
of counts was filed with the High Court in Bijelo<br />
Polje against Dačević and his fellow Radicals Branko<br />
Vujašević, Jovica Laketić, Ljubomir Odović and Tihomir<br />
Vujadinović. The prosecutor accused them of acts of<br />
terrorism, violence, assaulting police officers, obstructing<br />
police officers in the performance of their duty,<br />
occupying vital public facilities, erecting barricades on<br />
36 ”Agreement on Terror,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 4 September 1992.
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access roads to Pljevlja, threatening to blow up the Djurdjevića<br />
Tara bridge, and other acts committed on 8 and<br />
9 August 1992. All these acts, the prosecutor said, constituted<br />
massive and organized resistance to law enforcement<br />
and other state agencies and their measures, created<br />
a feeling of insecurity in the public, and were<br />
directed against the constitutional order. The counts of<br />
violent behavior included the harassment and beating<br />
of Muhamed Hrastovina on 27 July 1992 by Dačević and<br />
a group of armed and uniformed men, and the death<br />
threats made against a police inspector, Milan Cvijović.<br />
The prosecutor also alleged that at an SRS meeting on<br />
17 August, Dačević urged about 200 people to use force<br />
to release about 10 persons who were at the time up<br />
before the Magistrates Court for inciting disorders during<br />
the Radical protests in Pljevlja. Heeding his words,<br />
those present at the meeting proceeded immediately to<br />
the Pljevlja courthouse and brought out the persons<br />
charged.<br />
Speaking of the incident, Magistrates Court President<br />
Šerif Čengić said police had filed misdemeanor charges<br />
against 10 persons who had been inciting the rioting in<br />
Pljevlja. He was waiting for the suspects to be brought<br />
into the courtroom when he heard a commotion outside<br />
the building. ”Security was tight but, in my opinion,<br />
not tight enough. There were about 1,000 people in<br />
front of the building. There was nothing the police<br />
could do. The crowd was exerting pressure, shouting<br />
‘Ustashe’ 37 and ‘Red gangsters’ and booing. I was on the<br />
phone with the republican Magistrates Court when one<br />
of my staff informed me that the suspects were gone.“ 38<br />
37 Ustashe, extreme Croatian nationalists during World War II.<br />
38 ”Invisible Liberators,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 19 August 1992.<br />
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Together with the suspects they had ”liberated,“ the<br />
crowd went to the local hotel where Dačević told them:<br />
”The police have made another mistake. They came to<br />
help us but in fact did the opposite. Those who are to<br />
blame for this must leave town.“ 39<br />
3.3.1. Dačević trial<br />
Montenegrin Radicals staged yet more protests when<br />
the trial of Dačević and the other Radicals opened<br />
before the High Court in Bijelo Polje on 18 January<br />
1993. Shouting their support for the accused, they<br />
demanded that the court deliberate and rule independently,<br />
meaning without ”anti-Serb“ influences, and<br />
insisted that Dačević could not be tried because of his<br />
legislative immunity. The judicial authorities pointed<br />
out that immunity was not applicable in Dačević’s case<br />
since the criminal charges against him had been<br />
brought before he became a deputy. Furthermore, the<br />
offenses with which he was charged carry a penalty of<br />
over five years in prison, which ruled out the possibility<br />
of his invoking parliamentary immunity.<br />
The trial deeply divided the Montenegrin public. On one<br />
side were members and supporters of the Radical and<br />
Serb National Renewal parties and those Serbs and Montenegrins<br />
who believed the trial was staged and that it<br />
marked the beginning of a settling of scores between the<br />
republic’s leaders and refractory Serbs in northern Montenegro.<br />
On the other were the Liberals, Muslims in Bijelo<br />
Polje and a proportion of the membership of the ruling<br />
Democratic Party of Socialists, who considered that the<br />
trial was a victory for justice and denoted that the rule of<br />
law was finally being established in Montenegro.<br />
39 Ibid.
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Hindered frequently by chanting crowds outside the<br />
courthouse, disorder in the public in the courtroom<br />
itself, and the persistence of one of the defense counsel<br />
in regularly appearing in camouflage fatigues even<br />
after being cautioned by the judge, the proceedings<br />
ended with the acquittal of the defendants of the count<br />
of terrorism. The presiding judge, Zoran Smolović, said<br />
the court had handed down this decision ”as, even<br />
though some of the acts that occurred in Pljevlja could<br />
be considered acts of violence that disturbed the public,<br />
no evidence was presented that the aim was to take<br />
power.“ 40<br />
Dačević was sentenced to one year in prison for violent<br />
and disorderly conduct and obstructing police officers<br />
in the performance of their duty. The seven attorneys<br />
who defended the accused pro bono repeatedly alleged<br />
that the trial of Dačević and his party colleagues was<br />
used to settle scores between the pro-Serb and the liberal<br />
wings in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Witnesses<br />
routinely changed their testimony and one, when the<br />
judge warned him against perjuring himself, replied: ”I<br />
didn’t know back then that there would be a trial and<br />
spoke like I would have talked to a neighbor.“ 41<br />
The Serbian Radical Party defended its members and<br />
strongly protested ”against the arbitrary behavior of the<br />
Montenegrin regime which, in collusion with the government<br />
of Milan Panić 42 on 21 September arrested<br />
Čeko Dačević and several other patriots from Pljevlja.“ 43<br />
40 ”Čeko Sentenced,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 21 June 1994.<br />
41 ”Witnesses Change Testimony,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 21 January<br />
1993.<br />
42 Milan Panić, Yugoslav Prime Minister 1992-1993.<br />
43 ”Parliament or Prison,“ Večernje Novosti, Belgrade, 18 January 1993.<br />
23
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Vojislav Šešelj apprized the public of his version of the<br />
Pljevlja events: ”The Montenegrin regime is trying to<br />
confuse the issue, that is, attempting to draw the people’s<br />
attention away from its treachery by inciting disorder<br />
and incidents.“ 44 He said the purpose of the measures<br />
taken by the Prosecutor’s Office and police was to<br />
effect Montenegro’s secession from Yugoslavia and<br />
provoke a conflict between the local population and JA<br />
troops in Pljevlja. In June 1993, the Montenegrin State<br />
Prosecutor, Vladimir Šušović, said all the acts of violence<br />
perpetrated around the republic and, in particular,<br />
in Pljevlja, Nikšić and Bijelo Polje, were attempts by<br />
certain groups to destabilize the situation in Montenegro<br />
and make people doubt the legal order and functioning<br />
of the state. Noting that all those accused of the<br />
criminal offenses in Pljevlja were Radicals and none of<br />
them denied committing them, he openly accused the<br />
SRS of destabilizing Montenegro, and said it was ludicrous<br />
that Dačević, the organizer of the violence, was a<br />
deputy to the Federal Parliament and served on the<br />
Defense and Security Committee of the Chamber of Citizens.<br />
Perceiving that Dačević was doing the SRS more harm<br />
than good, Šešelj in late June 1993 declared that he was<br />
no long a deputy since he had broken party discipline.<br />
Later on, when a split occurred in the Montenegrin<br />
chapter of the SRS in which Dačević played a part, Šešelj<br />
announced that Dačević had been expelled from the<br />
party: ”When they arrested him, we put him on our list<br />
of candidates for deputies and he was elected. I went to<br />
Bijelo Polje for the sentencing. The judge was one hour<br />
late because of the consultations he was having. They<br />
gave Čeko only one year though they had prepared a<br />
44 Ibid.
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much harsher sentence. We arranged for him to be allocated<br />
an apartment in Belgrade as a combatant with<br />
merit but Čeko thought he could be a brigand in Serbia<br />
and Montenegro. Well, he can’t!“ 45 When he belatedly<br />
became aware that Dačević was involved in ”criminal<br />
and police affairs,“ Šešelj also stripped his protege of<br />
the title of Chetnik vojvoda.<br />
Reviewing the case, the Montenegrin Supreme Court<br />
on 21 June 1994 set aside the lower court ruling and<br />
sentenced Dačević to two years’ imprisonment. Dačević<br />
was subsequently among 82 convicts who were pardoned<br />
by President Bulatović. He was in prison from 1<br />
April 1996 to early 1998.<br />
4. Propaganda Against Montenegrin<br />
Muslims<br />
Dačević, the Radicals and the Chetniks cannot, however,<br />
be blamed for everything that happened in Pljevlja<br />
municipality. There were other contributing factors: villages<br />
along the Bosnian border were full of Bosnian<br />
Serb troops and paramilitaries, the JA began enlisting<br />
soldiers but only Serbs and Montenegrins, and massing<br />
troops in the area. All this made the local Muslim population<br />
apprehensive. JA troops would come to Muslim<br />
villages and search the houses for weapons, accusing<br />
the villagers of aiding the Green Berets and saying that<br />
their young men were in large number joining the<br />
Bosnian Muslim army. Speaking of incidents against<br />
Montenegrin Muslims in border villages, Minister of<br />
Internal Affairs Nikola Pejaković laid some of the blame<br />
on them: ”We have information that a certain number of<br />
45 ”Šešelj: First Steps in Resolving Bosnian Crisis,“ Politika, Belgrade,<br />
23 June 1993.<br />
25
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citizens took part or are now taking part in the Bosnian<br />
war on all sides. Individuals have suffered and this has<br />
triggered a destructive process to which the intensive<br />
border crossing contributes.“ 46<br />
Unproven accusations against <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims were<br />
set out also by the head of the community office in<br />
Kovačevići, Branko Stevanović. In late August, the Montenegrin<br />
daily Pobjeda quoted him as saying: ”According<br />
to some information, 98 young men from <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
are fighting with the Green Berets in Sarajevo and<br />
Goražde. Their parents say that they are in Germany,<br />
Turkey... The Serb villagers are afraid that they will come<br />
one night and slaughter them all.“ 47 In the same report,<br />
Pobjeda recalled that during his visit to Pljevlja, President<br />
Bulatović told the leader of the local organi<strong>za</strong>tion<br />
of the Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA) that he<br />
had been informed that local Muslims had 350 rifles.<br />
The attempts of officials to balance out the blame were<br />
backed by the paper’s reporter who wrote that ”Illegal<br />
weapons were found in every single Muslim house that<br />
was searched.“ 48<br />
Commenting on the reporting of the state media, leader<br />
of the Pljevlja SDA organi<strong>za</strong>tion Šefket Brković told<br />
Monitor many of them ”want to present the Pljevlja Muslims<br />
as a destabilizing factor in this region. I maintain<br />
that no Muslim has committed even a major traffic<br />
offense, still less anything more serious. The ambiguous<br />
statements of some people could lead an observer without<br />
knowledge of the situation to believe there is a kind<br />
of symmetry: that ultra-nationalism exists on both sides.<br />
That simply is not true, and nor are statements that what<br />
46 ”We May Have Been Wrong,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 17 August 1992.<br />
47 ”Is <strong>Bukovica</strong> Armed?“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 25 August 1992.<br />
48 Ibid.
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is happening here is merely a reflection of the war in<br />
Bosnia. Muslim stores were being blown up long before<br />
the war in Bosnia broke out.“ 49<br />
Brković expressed his concern at the failure of the<br />
authorities to take effective measures to protect the life<br />
and property of Muslims in Pljevlja and the villages<br />
around it. ”The situation is alarming, especially in the<br />
villages. Families are arriving here every day because<br />
after being ‘visited’ by groups wearing the same uniforms<br />
and armed with the same weapons as military<br />
and police border units. At times they storm into houses<br />
with German shepherds and goad the dogs to attack<br />
people. Old women of 70 to 80 have walked through<br />
the woods to get to Pljevlja to seek protection. When<br />
these people turn to the authorities, they are promised<br />
safety but that lasts only as long as they are there. There<br />
is a real danger of Šešelj’s threat that there will be no<br />
Muslims in a 30-kilometer zone along the Bosnian border<br />
coming true. The people who have fled some villages<br />
in Pljevlja municipality are proof that this idea is<br />
already being carried out.“ 50<br />
Some Montenegrin state media on occasion came out<br />
against the advocacy of war, viewing of the Pljevlja case<br />
in the context of Šešelj’s ”defense of Serbdom,“ justifying<br />
the terror to which the Muslim population was subjected<br />
to because of its supposed disloyalty, and the<br />
claims that Muslims were arming themselves in preparation<br />
for rebellion. On 10 August, Pobjeda said in an editorial:<br />
”There certainly are some extremists among the<br />
local Muslims there who bear part of the responsibility<br />
and who should be dealt with by the legitimate authorities.<br />
But the fact that Muslims are only 17% percent of<br />
49 ”Country With Surplus People,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 28 May 1993.<br />
50 Ibid.<br />
27
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the population according to the census is disregarded.<br />
Is it logical to believe that such a small percentage of a<br />
population can really pose a danger to the numerically<br />
much stronger Montenegrins and Serbs and be the sole<br />
cause of instability? What about the responsibility of the<br />
majority nation?“ 51<br />
For its part, Monitor wrote that there would be no peace<br />
in northern Montenegro until Belgrade took a decision<br />
to that effect and the war in Bosnia ended.<br />
5. <strong>Bukovica</strong> at the Beginning of the<br />
War in Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
JA troops came to Kovačevići in April 1992. Šaban Rizvanović,<br />
the chairman of the <strong>Bukovica</strong> neighborhood<br />
community at the time, told the HLC that shortly before<br />
a local official, Branko Stevanović, suggested to him that<br />
they, ”as representatives of the community, should ask<br />
the JA to come to <strong>Bukovica</strong> to protect the population<br />
from war and to maintain peace in this multi-ethnic<br />
area.“ 52 Rizvanović was against the idea. He told Stevanović<br />
the police presence was sufficient and that the<br />
arrival of military troops would threaten peace.<br />
Nonetheless, the troops soon came. Not long afterwards,<br />
many Bosnian Muslim refugees from Foča<br />
arrived and were taken in by Rizvanović and other local<br />
Muslims. During April and May, the Rizvanovićs had<br />
about 20 refugees from Foča in their home, and he was<br />
ordered make a list of their names. Stevanović also<br />
made a list of his own on which he circled the names of<br />
men aged between 18 and 45. Rizvanović was told these<br />
51 ”It’s the State’s Move,“ Pobjeda, Podgorica, 10 August 1992.<br />
52 Statement by Šaban Rizvanović, Sarajevo, 15 October 2001, HLC<br />
documentation.
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Map of <strong>Bukovica</strong>
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men would make up a work unit. Rizvanović sent his list<br />
to the social welfare center in Pljevlja. He described to<br />
the HLC what happened next:<br />
Unfortunately, that list caused us a lot of trouble. I<br />
noticed that some men whose names were on it disappeared<br />
and then turned up in prison in Pljevlja. I know<br />
that the following refugees from Foča villages whose<br />
names were on it were ill-treated and beaten: Abdulah<br />
Moči from Papratno, Safet Ćelo from Veselice, Ibro and<br />
Mujo Kafedžić from Potpeći, Muradin Čaušević from<br />
Vikoći, and some others whose names I no longer recall.<br />
In late May, the Bosnian Muslim refugees were told they<br />
could return to their villages around Foča but, according<br />
to Rizvanović’s information, three months later they<br />
were forced to flee again to other places in Bosnia-<br />
Herzegovina.<br />
Jakub Durgut, born in 1959 in Čerjenci village, kept a journal<br />
on the events in <strong>Bukovica</strong> which led Muslims to move<br />
out. 53 In his statement to the HLC, he began by explaining<br />
that although administratively a part of Pljevlja municipality<br />
and Montenegro, <strong>Bukovica</strong> gravitated toward Foča,<br />
Goražde and Čajniče in Bosnia where its people had relatives,<br />
went to school and worked. He enumerated the<br />
once all-Muslim villages in which there were no Muslims<br />
left: Madžari, Vukšići, Budijevići, Ograde, Čerjenci, Brdo,<br />
Stražice, Plansko, Močevići, Kruševci, Kava, Bunguri,<br />
Ravni, Klakorine, Djenovići. These villages were abandoned<br />
before the signing of the Dayton Agreement 54,<br />
53 Statement by Jakub Durgut, 21 June 2002, HLC documentation.<br />
54 Dayton Peace Agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina, signed in Paris<br />
on 15 December 1995 by the Presidents of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
and Croatia - Slobodan Milošević, Alija Izetbegović and Franjo<br />
Tudjman.
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while Muslims left Mrčići, Rujevica, Hajlovine, Kržava and<br />
Lugovi afterwards. Durgut recalls:<br />
The police in Pljevlja arrested Mujo Koror from Kava on<br />
19 May and handed him over to the Republika Srpska 55<br />
army in Čajniče where Mujo owned a house. I know<br />
that he was killed later on. In June of that year - I don’t<br />
remember the exact date - while searching his house, the<br />
police beat up Ibro Močević, who was about 45, took<br />
him to Pljevlja where they continued beating and illtreating<br />
him. They let him go the next day. Ibro went<br />
abroad after that. The police beat his relative Nazif, who<br />
was about 75, that same day. 56<br />
The HLC was able to learn more about the 70-year-old<br />
Osman Bungur 57 from Jakub Durgut. Bungur was<br />
severely beaten by JA reservists Stevo Danilović, Mirko<br />
Srndić and Simo Barac from Meljena village and as a<br />
result lost his hearing. On 16 February 1993, Bungur, his<br />
wife Almasa and another nine members of the family<br />
were abducted and taken to Čajniče. Osman and<br />
Almasa were subsequently returned, spent some time in<br />
Pljevlja and were then transferred by an international<br />
humanitarian organi<strong>za</strong>tion to Olovo in Bosnia where<br />
they both died within a short span of each other.<br />
Durgut told the HLC about other cases of physical abuse<br />
of <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims in the summer of 1992. Ibro Bungur,<br />
his sons Hasan, Husein and Ešref, their relatives Džafer<br />
and Vejsil, and Enver and Munever Kaim were beaten first<br />
on 11 July and then again a week later, on 17 July:<br />
55 Bosnian Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina.<br />
56 Statement by Jakub Durgut, 21 June 2002, HLC documentation.<br />
57 Spotlight Report No. 4, Human Rights in Serbia and Montenegro,<br />
HLC, Belgrade, May 1993; Spotlight Series - Human Rights 1991-<br />
1995, HLC, Belgrade, 1997.<br />
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Besides physically abusing them in their homes, the<br />
reservists forced them to beat each other so that Ešref<br />
beat his brother Hasan and vice versa. They had to do it<br />
or risk being beaten with wooden stakes. After this incident,<br />
the beaten men fled on foot over the hills and<br />
through the woods to Pljevlja. They left a good deal of<br />
property - a grain mill, truck, car, a store full of goods, a<br />
flock of sheep, cattle, horses, furniture. I think this property<br />
was the reason for the ill-treatment because it was<br />
all stolen afterwards. They all moved to Turkey later.<br />
The oldest one, Ibro, died in the summer of 1994.<br />
Another incident also resulted in Muslims fleeing<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong>:<br />
The police beat up Suada and Salem Bičić, Omer<br />
Hodžić, and Enes Imamović on the road near Guničići<br />
village on 16 June. They were all between 25 and 30.<br />
They moved out immediately, going first to Pljevlja and<br />
then to other countries.<br />
5. 1. Murders in Vitine<br />
Eight families lived in the all-Muslim village of Vitine<br />
before the Bosnian war, seven with the last name<br />
Ramović and the family of Omer Durak. Šaćir Ramović<br />
and Omer Durak were killed on 4 July 1992. Their<br />
wives, the last people left in the village, fled the same<br />
day. Vitine remains uninhabited to this day.<br />
HLC field researchers spoke with Salim Šljuka about the<br />
conduct of VJ reservists and the atmosphere in Vitine in<br />
April 1992. In the early morning of 27 April, Šljuka left<br />
his home in Pljevlja for Vitine. His aunt and uncle lived<br />
in the village and, having heard that ”all sorts of things<br />
were going on there and that some people had been<br />
killed,“ he decided to bring them to Pljevlja to stay with
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him. 58 His friends Momir Matović and Osman and Edin<br />
Ramović, all from Pljevlja, accompanied him. Montenegrin<br />
police stopped them at Šula, searched them, and<br />
allowed them to proceed. On the road, they met two<br />
men, Mićo Sekulović and a Montenegrin nicknamed<br />
”Caco,“ who were on their way to Pljevlja from Čelebići<br />
in Bosnia, and asked them about the situation in Vitine.<br />
The reply was: ”It’s all being cleared out.“<br />
Certificate on destroyed property of Osman Ramović of Vitine 59<br />
58 Statement by Salim Šljuka, Pljevlja, 15 March 2002, HLC documentation.<br />
59 Certificate on the destruction of property owned by Osman<br />
Ramović of Vitine (translation):<br />
Republic of Montenegro<br />
Municipality of Pljevlja<br />
Šula Neighborhood Community<br />
At the request of Osman Ramović and on the basis of established facts, I<br />
hearby issue this<br />
CERTIFICATE<br />
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Describing the journey, Šljuka mentioned an event<br />
which clearly illustrates the Muslims’ fear of the JA. As<br />
they approached the all-Serb village of Kolibe, they<br />
noticed a military vehicle; Osman Ramović immediately<br />
opened the car door and ”ran away as fast as he could.“<br />
Šljuka and Matović continued to the house of Petar<br />
Radović, Matović’s father-in-law who, alluding to the Muslims<br />
in the party, asked his son-in-law why he had<br />
brought them. Nonetheless, they sat down and had coffee<br />
and plum brandy. The JA had a camp near by and<br />
often passed by the Radović house. That day, the soldiers<br />
came twice while Šljuka and his companions were there:<br />
They carried out the search by pointing their weapons at<br />
us and ordering us to raise our hands and keep them up<br />
until they said we could put them down. I don’t know the<br />
whereabouts of Edin Ramović, who had come with me<br />
and was, I think, under age, while this browbeating was<br />
going on but, at one point, I saw him running out of<br />
Petar Radović’s house toward the nearby woods. The soldiers<br />
fired after him but he was lucky and they missed.<br />
Among the soldiers, Šljuka recognized Slobodan Lečić<br />
who struck him several times in the chest with the butt<br />
of his rifle and knocked him down. He described what<br />
happened next:<br />
In which NC Šula confirms that the house, three stables, barn and two<br />
shacks of Osman Ramović, born in Vitine village and currently residing<br />
in Sarajevo, were burned in 1992. All the above buildings were located<br />
in the territory of the Republic of Montenegro.<br />
This certificate has been issued at the request of the above in order that<br />
he could regulate the issue of his housing in Sarajevo where he now<br />
resides, and cannot be used for other purposes.<br />
Šula, 1 February 2002 Chairman NC Šula<br />
Novica Despotović
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The other soldiers went on beating me. All of a sudden,<br />
shooting broke out between the soldiers dealing with me<br />
and another group. When things calmed down I heard<br />
some soldiers say they were going to take me to Foča. Petar<br />
Radović came out against that. As far as I can remember,<br />
he said: ‘If you take him, then you have to take me too.’ I<br />
also heard someone say: ‘Vitine will burn tomorrow.’ I saw<br />
them giving a villager, Halim Ramović, a bad time, brandishing<br />
a knife at him and saying something to him.<br />
When Radović remonstrated with them, the soldiers<br />
released Šljuka and he returned to Pljevlja, picking up<br />
Edin and Osman Ramović on the way back. Following<br />
this incident, I<strong>za</strong> and Hasan Ramović fled through the<br />
woods to Pljevlja. They subsequently left for Turkey but<br />
shortly afterwards went to Sarajevo where they both<br />
died in 2001.<br />
Šljuka heard that all the Muslims left Vitine after this<br />
incident, with the exception of Šaćir Ramović, his wife<br />
Fatima, Omer Durak and his wife Hasiba. All four were<br />
over 70 years old. Ramović and Durak were brutally<br />
killed on 4 July 1992.<br />
The HLC learned how they died from Šaćir Ramović’s<br />
son-in-law Izet Kordić: 60<br />
Fatima Ramović came to us in Pljevlja on 4 July 1992<br />
and said she had barely escaped with her life from her<br />
home in Vitine. She said her husband had stayed and<br />
had probably been killed, and their neighbor Omer<br />
Durak too. She said JA reservists barged into her house<br />
that day, started giving her and her husband a hard<br />
time, and that she managed somehow to get away.<br />
60 Statement by Izet Kordić, Pljevlja, 28 March 2002, HLC documentation.<br />
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To find out what had happened to the old men, Kordić<br />
contacted the JA in Pljevlja. On 7 July 1992, Lt. Col.<br />
Živković informed him that he could go to Vitine to<br />
bury Šaćir Ramović and Omer Durak and secured a car<br />
to drive him there. Ramović was accompanied by Lt.<br />
Col. Slavko Kovačević, who now resides in Pljevlja.<br />
When we got to Vitine, I found the dead body of my<br />
father-in-law Saćir Ramović in his house. I took a good<br />
look at him and was able to see that he had died from<br />
two gunshot wounds. Before we buried him, the military<br />
advised me to put on a uniform for my own safety<br />
and wear it when I buried him, so I did. Afterward, I<br />
went to the house of Omer Durak and found him dead<br />
too. I saw wounds on his body and stomach, probably<br />
from a knife or some kind of sharp object. I think he bled<br />
to death. Some of the reservists there told me Omer<br />
Durak was alive when they found him but that no one<br />
dared take him to a doctor.<br />
Kordić quickly dug graves near the house and buried<br />
the two old men. The reservists told him they did not<br />
know who had killed them or why. When she told<br />
Kordić what had happened, Fatima Ramović said she<br />
believed the killer was one Radović from Rijeka village<br />
near Čelebići in Bosnia’s Foča municipality.<br />
The widowed Fatima Ramović and Hasiba Durak now<br />
live in the Sarajevo suburb Butmir with their children.<br />
5.2. Expulsion from Rosulje<br />
Osman Tahirbegović (born 1949) from the <strong>Bukovica</strong> village<br />
of Rosulje recounted 61 to the HLC that a large group<br />
61 Statement by Osman Tahirbegović, August 2001, HLC documentation.
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of heavily armed police and soldiers came to his house<br />
for the first time on 4 May 1992. Their leader was Milan<br />
Sokolović of Pljevlja and his deputy was Slaviša Svrkota.<br />
Tahirbegović also recognized VJ reservists Slavko<br />
Popadić from Pljevlja who had worked at the local<br />
sawmill, and Slobodan Miletić from Tvrdakovići village<br />
who later became a police officer. Božidar Radović from<br />
Piperi and one Džoga<strong>za</strong>, a VJ reservist, were in the group.<br />
Svrkota and two police came in and, shouting that they<br />
would kill the whole family and burn down the house,<br />
locked Tahirbegović in one room and drove his wife<br />
Zlatija (43), mother Zećira (90), sons Mustafa (19) and<br />
Haris (17), and daughter Emina (4.5) into the yard.<br />
Džogaz fired his sniper rifle over the heads of the family<br />
and then the group proceeded to search the house.<br />
After the search, they put Haris and Mustafa into their<br />
Pinzguaer vehicle, saying they were taking them to<br />
”Vojvoda Dušan Kornjača“ in Čajniče for exchange purposes.<br />
Haris and Mustafa soon returned and told the<br />
family that, as they were being driven by the house of<br />
Mladen Dajović, a Montenegrin, Dajović and his five<br />
sons stopped the vehicle, pulled them out and told<br />
them to go home.<br />
Tahirbegović found that the police and soldiers had<br />
taken about one kilogram of gold coins and jewelry<br />
when they searched his house. The next day he reported<br />
the theft to the Pljevlja police. On 6 May, JA reservists<br />
came and took him to the community office in Kovačevići<br />
for questioning. His interrogators demanded that<br />
he tell them where he was hiding weapons for the<br />
Green Berets and warned him to tell no one about his<br />
housing being searched and his gold stolen. He was<br />
held for several hours before being allowed to go. ”I<br />
think Miladin Klačar, a forester from Pljevlja, saved me<br />
then,“ Tahirbegović told the HLC.<br />
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The family was left alone until 18 July when a patrol<br />
made up of Montenegrin police and VJ soldiers came<br />
again to their home. The police officer in charge was<br />
Bane Borović, and the VJ was led by Lt. Aco Malinić and<br />
included the reservist Dragan ”Crni“ Ćurčić. They said<br />
they were going to search the house because they been<br />
informed about illegal weapons and that Tahirbegović<br />
was aiding the Green Berets.<br />
I was working on the circular saw with my sons at the<br />
time. They told us to step away from the saw or they<br />
would use it to cut off our heads. We turned off the saw<br />
and stopped working. Then they said to us: ‘If you don’t<br />
have weapons, do you want to buy some from us?’ At<br />
that moment, Dragan Ćurčić hit me and my sons with<br />
his rifle butt. They ordered one of my sons to go to Mitar<br />
Ćeranic in Jaković village and buy a pistol from him,<br />
probably to try to set him up. I think my wife Zlatija,<br />
who wasn’t at home, came at this point. We gathered<br />
together and, all of a sudden, Bane Borović ordered us<br />
to leave our home by 7 o’clock the next morning<br />
because there was a war going on. I asked him why and<br />
he said it was a war between Serbs and Muslims. This<br />
group of about 20 uniformed men gave us a hard time<br />
for about two hours before they left, saying they would<br />
kill us all if we weren’t gone by morning.<br />
Fearing for their lives, Tahirbegović and his family left<br />
their home on 19 July, leaving everything they owned -<br />
land, house, outbuildings, tools, six oxen, three cows, 30<br />
sheep and horses - and went to Pljevlja. Once there, they<br />
reported what had happened to Mayor Momčilo<br />
Bojović, JA garrison commander Lt. Col. Živković, Police<br />
Chief Radoman Purić, and gave a statement to police<br />
inspector Slavko Rončević. Tahirbegović said all of them<br />
promised to take action but that nothing was ever done.
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The Tahirbegovićs had to rent an apartment in Pljevlja<br />
and never received any humanitarian aid. They tried to<br />
return to their farm on 25 April 1996 but at about 11<br />
o’clock that same night there was an armed attack on<br />
their house. None of the family was hurt. They went<br />
back to Pljevlja and were able to return to their home<br />
that summer.<br />
5.3. Physical and Mental Abuse of the Kaims<br />
Osam Kaim (born 1913) of Bunguri village recounted to<br />
the HLC what his sons Enver and Munever were put<br />
through:<br />
I can’t remember now how many times it happened. I<br />
know they were beaten twice by our neighbors who<br />
were in the VJ and Montenegrin police. Their names are<br />
Barac and Danilović from Srečanje, I don’t know their<br />
first names but I do know that they were in the police.<br />
Then there was a Ristanović and two with the last name<br />
Kovačević, who were VJ reservists. My sons live in Sarajevo<br />
now and they know the names of these men. One<br />
time in the summer of 1992 - I don’t know the exact date<br />
- they beat my son Enver and relative Husein Bungur,<br />
who is now in Sijovine near Goražde. They also made<br />
them punch and beat each other with wooden staffs.<br />
After that, they took them to the community center office<br />
in Kovačevići and continued to beat them. The second<br />
time, again I don’t remember the date, they beat my son<br />
Enver in Kržava village so hard that he passed out. It<br />
was the same men who beat him the first time. After that<br />
beating, Enver fled to Pljevlja and from there to Turkey.<br />
My son Munever was also beaten several times but he<br />
can tell you about it better. 62<br />
62 Statement by Osman Kaim, refugee center in Goražde, 22 October<br />
2002.<br />
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Osman Kaim was himself severely beaten in Kovačevići<br />
in the fall of 1992 when he went to the community<br />
office to obtain a certificate on the extension of his son<br />
Munever’s ID card. Such certificates were valid for only<br />
one month and every time Munever went to get one he<br />
was physically or verbally abused.<br />
I decided to go instead of Munever to spare him. Being<br />
an old man, I thought they wouldn’t make problems for<br />
me. I got to Kovačevići and saw a lot of soldiers and<br />
civilians outside the building housing the police station,<br />
post office, a store, and the Registry Office. They were<br />
wearing different kinds of uniforms - camouflage<br />
fatigues, ordinary military and police uniforms - so that<br />
you couldn’t tell who was police and who was army. A<br />
tall young man in uniform came up to me, grabbed the<br />
beret I always wear, and threw it up on the roof of the<br />
building. I kept cool and handed my son’s ID to a man<br />
in uniform, after which he gave it back to me together<br />
with the certificate. When he was giving me the papers,<br />
he suddenly hit me in the side, so hard that the spot is<br />
still painful. I found out later that his last name is<br />
Djerković and that he’s from Brdo village in <strong>Bukovica</strong>.<br />
Then I went home. It was about noon. About one kilometer<br />
from Kovačevići, near the edge of the woods, three<br />
uniformed men caught up with me, including the one<br />
called Djereković - a short man - who had hit me in<br />
Kovačevići. As soon as they came close, they started tripping<br />
me up to make me fall. I moved aside, thinking they<br />
would go on their way. But Djerković came up to me,<br />
threw a belt around my neck and pushed me over a tree<br />
stump. Then all three started kicking and punching me<br />
all over. Djerković kept me pinned down all the time<br />
with the belt around my neck. I passed out after that<br />
beating and lay there for three or four hours.
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It was getting dark when I came to. I started off for<br />
home and didn’t fell too bad until I reached Marinjac<br />
village, about four kilometers farther on. When I got to<br />
the village I sat down by the fountain for a drink of<br />
water and a rest. I rested for about half an hour and<br />
when I got up again, I felt very weak and painful all<br />
over my body from the beating. I made a big effort and<br />
got home about 11 p.m. The next day, my family<br />
wrapped me in a raw sheepskin to bring down the big<br />
swellings I had. I lay wrapped in the sheepskin for about<br />
10 days.<br />
Osman Kaim was not physically abused after this incident,<br />
but his house was searched a number of times and<br />
he was sworn at and insulted. He said it was at this time<br />
that younger men began flee <strong>Bukovica</strong>. Those who had<br />
the necessary papers went to Macedonia, Turkey or<br />
other countries via Pljevlja. Those who did not trekked<br />
through the woods to Goražde or other places in<br />
Bosnia under Muslim-army control.<br />
Osman Kaim stayed and in the spring of 1993 saw<br />
Drago, Pero and Mišo Kovačević from the nearby village<br />
of Šapići in Bosnia’s Čajniče municipality destroying<br />
abandoned Muslim houses in the <strong>Bukovica</strong> villages<br />
Šapici, Kava and Bunguri.<br />
They took the furniture, household goods, roof beams<br />
and everything else that could be carried away. After<br />
what had happened to me and around me, I decided on<br />
5 May 1993 to leave my village Bunguri with my family.<br />
That night we walked through the woods and the mountains<br />
to Goražde. I still live here in a refugee center.<br />
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5.4. The murder of Hajro and Ejub Muslić<br />
Jakub Durgut 63 told the HLC that Hajro Muslić (80) and<br />
his son Ejub (about 30) were killed in their house in<br />
Madžari on 28 October 1992. Finding it strange that the<br />
livestock had not been put out to pasture, their neighbor<br />
Šemso went to check up on them. He found Hajro<br />
and Ejub shot dead in their house. There were no signs<br />
that the house had been searched or anything taken.<br />
Lying near the bodies was a metal flask half full of plum<br />
brandy, which did not belong to the dead men.<br />
Plevlje cemetery where Hajro and Ejub Muslić, killed in their house<br />
in Madžari in 1992, are buried<br />
63 Statement by Jakub Durgut, Pljevlja, June 2001, HLC documentation,
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5.5. November house searches<br />
On 1 and 2 November, the Montenegrin police and VJ<br />
reservists mounted a major operation to search Muslim<br />
houses for concealed illegal weapons. Many people<br />
were beaten and threatened with death unless they left<br />
their homes.<br />
5.5.1 The death of Himzo Stovrag<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Up to 1992, eight Muslim families lived in Vukšići village:<br />
four with the last name Drkenda and four with the<br />
last name Stovrag. In the early morning of 1 November<br />
that year, a large group of police and military arrived.<br />
Zlatija Stovraga 64 told the HLC that they demanded to<br />
search the houses for weapons. She recognized among<br />
them three police: Goran Zindović, Slaviša Svrkota and<br />
one Šubarić, who was particularly brutal.<br />
I was in a panic and didn’t know where I was. Then I<br />
saw that they were beating my husband Himzo (born<br />
1932). They kicked and punched him and beat him on<br />
the head and all over with some kind of clubs. He fell to<br />
the ground after the first few blows and they went on<br />
beating him. I saw that he was covered in blood when<br />
he got up. Then they ordered him to run around. He<br />
tried but I think he couldn’t, and they beat him again. I<br />
don’t know how long it all lasted but it was a terrible<br />
thing they did to my husband. They started leaving after<br />
a time and one of the policemen, I think it was Goran<br />
Zindović, went to my husband and said: ‘If I find you<br />
here tomorrow, you’ll get worse than you did today.’<br />
When they had gone, I went to help my husband, wiped<br />
the blood off him and helped him change. After a time<br />
64 Statement by Zlatija Stovrag, October 2001, HLC documentation.<br />
43
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he felt a bit better but kept saying, ‘I can’t take this any<br />
more.’ He was in very low spirits. Sometime before dusk<br />
he went off. When he left home, he kept saying something<br />
like he couldn’t wait for them to come back. He<br />
didn’t come home all night. I was worried about him<br />
and thought maybe he had gone into hiding. I let the<br />
sheep out to pasture in the morning and soon afterwards<br />
noticed that they had gathered under an apple<br />
tree. When I got close I saw my husband Himzo hanging<br />
from a branch. I was beside myself and don’t know how<br />
I managed to call the neighbors. I know Ismet Osmanagić<br />
was the first to come. He cut the rope and got my husband<br />
down.<br />
The ruins of Himzo Stovrag’s house in Vukšići<br />
(photo: 30 April 2002)<br />
Sejfo and Saćir Osmanagić helped Zlatija bury her husband<br />
in the afternoon. Imam Mehmed Durgut performed<br />
the rites. The next day, police from Pljevlja came<br />
and conducted an on-site investigation.
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5.5.2. The beating of Jakub Durgut<br />
Jakub Durgut (born 1959) was grazing his sheep near<br />
his home in Ograde on 1 November when police from<br />
Pljevlja arrived. Among them Durgut recognized Goran<br />
Zindović, who said he was the patrol leader and that he<br />
had a warrant to search the house. Zindović added that<br />
the police had received a tip that Durgut was hiding a<br />
rifle in his house.<br />
Things were tense from the start so I wasn’t able to tell<br />
exactly how many police there were. I said right away<br />
that I didn’t have any guns. But they attacked me and<br />
started beating me - punching and kicking me and hitting<br />
me with rifle butts. I think the policeman whose last<br />
name is Šubarić was the worst. He took a grenade from<br />
his pocket and threatened to put it in my mouth. I fell<br />
down after the first few blows. They kept using the worst<br />
swear words and asking things like what did we need<br />
weapons for. 65<br />
Durgut told the HLC that Šubarić ripped a gold chain<br />
from his neck as he was beating him. After tormenting<br />
him for half an hour, the police led him in the direction<br />
of Pljevlja. They had traversed only some 200 meters<br />
when they met Radenko Danilović, a police reservist<br />
who was Durgut’s school friend. Danilović succeeded<br />
in persuading the police to let Durgut go, saying he<br />
knew he was a good man and had no weapons.<br />
5.5.3. Arrested and imprisoned<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Čerjenci, a village seven kilometers from Kovačevići,<br />
was home to 11 Muslim families until the war in Bosnia<br />
65 Statement by Jakub Durgut, June 2001, HLC documentation.<br />
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started. On 1 November 1992, police came from Pljevlja<br />
to search the village houses and beat Osman Durgut<br />
(born 1954), Šefko Osmanagić (born 1967), Sejfo<br />
Osmanagić (born 1970) and Rasim Tahirović (born<br />
1963). After this incident, the villagers left their homes<br />
and moved to Bosnia or other countries. Only two families<br />
went to Pljevlja and continue living there today.<br />
The house of Osman Durgut was torched and the others<br />
were looted and badly damaged.<br />
The ruins of Zajko Durgut’s house in Čerjenci<br />
(photo: 30 April 2002)<br />
In his statement to the HLC, Osman Durgut 66 identified<br />
among the police who came to his home Goran Zindović,<br />
Slaviša Svrkota, Lale Ostojić, one with the last<br />
name Šubarić. He did not know the names of the others.<br />
They demanded to search the house for weapons.<br />
Osman was told to come out, while his wife Fazila, son<br />
Edin (16), and daughter Edisa (14) stayed inside.<br />
66 Statement by Osman Durgut, Sarajevo, October 2001, HLC documentation.
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I went out and wasn’t far from the house when some of<br />
them started to hit me with their rifle butts and to kick<br />
and punch me. I don’t know how long it lasted, and<br />
when they stopped I somehow got to my feet and, all<br />
beat-up, made my way back to the house. When my children<br />
saw me all battered and bloody they started to cry<br />
loudly. When the police searched the house, I told them I<br />
had a 7.65 mm Zastava pistol and a hunting rifle for<br />
which I had permits. I turned the guns over to them.<br />
The police then took Osman Durgut to Budijevci village,<br />
some two kilometers away, where they beat him<br />
again, handcuffed him and made him crawl to a brook<br />
to wash the blood off his face.<br />
Afterwards they pushed a police club into my mouth<br />
and made me keep it there until they said I could take it<br />
out. All this was done to me by the policeman Šubarić.<br />
Durgut recounted that Budijevci was an assembly point<br />
to which JA reservists brought other villagers, among<br />
whom he saw Idriz Durgut, Šemso Babić, Rasim Drkenda,<br />
Sejfo Osmanagić, Himzo Tahirović and others.<br />
Slaviša Svrkota came up to me, drew his pistol, pointed<br />
it at me and demanded that I tell him where Salko Močević<br />
was. He fired five shots over my head. I was deaf for<br />
five days afterwards.<br />
The Muslims were driven to the Pljevlja police station<br />
and locked up. At the station, Durgut saw all the men he<br />
named above and others whose names he does not<br />
know. While in custody, the Muslims were frequently<br />
beaten with clubs and kicked.<br />
A fat man with fair hair whose name I don’t know used<br />
to come into my cell and beat me. When he got so tired<br />
he couldn’t go on, he’d ask me: ‘Did you piss yourself?’<br />
47
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Remains of Osman Durgut’s house in Čerjenci<br />
(photo: 30 April 2002)<br />
Durgut was subsequently transferred to the prison in<br />
Bijelo Polje were he was held for a month. He was not<br />
beaten there. After his release, he spent some time in<br />
Pljevlja and then went to prison to serve the six-month<br />
term to which he was sentenced by the Municipal Court<br />
in Pljevlja for illegal possession of firearms (Art. 204,<br />
Montenegrin Criminal Code). His wife and children had<br />
left for Turkey in the meantime and he joined them in<br />
late 1993.<br />
5.5.3.1. Flight to Goražde<br />
Police led by Lale Čavić came to the house of Šaćir<br />
Osmanagić at about 7 p.m. on 1 November 1992, and<br />
told his sons Šefko (born 1967) and Sejfo (born 1970) to<br />
go to the house of Rasim Drkenda in Madžare village.<br />
Šaćir, his wife Hajrija, daughters Šefka (15) and Šemsa<br />
(23), and 13-year-old son Ševal stayed at home. When<br />
Sejfo reached Drkenda’s house with his brother, he saw<br />
two vehicles and a large number of police, among<br />
whom he recognized Slaviša Svrkota and Radmilo
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Danilović. Rasim Drkenda and two other villagers,<br />
Hamed Vukas and Šemso Babić, were also there. The<br />
police took the Muslims to Pljevlja via Kržava village.<br />
There were some other people gathered in Kržava when<br />
we got there. I saw Slaviša Svrkota kick Himzo Stovrag<br />
in the back, fire over his head and order him to run. On<br />
the way to Pljevlja, I heard VJ reservist Aco Malinić - I<br />
don’t remember if he was there all the time or came later<br />
- ask why they were bothering to take us to Pljevlja, that<br />
we should all be killed and our bodies thrown in the<br />
creek. 67<br />
The ruins of Salih Tahirović’s house in Čerjenci<br />
(photo: 30 April 2002)<br />
The Muslim men were held in custody in Pljevlja for<br />
eight days. They received no food nor were they<br />
allowed to go to the toilet for the first three days. They<br />
were often taken for questioning and kicked, punched<br />
and beaten with clubs. The policeman who meted out<br />
the worst treatment was Veselin Veljović.<br />
67 Statement by Sejfo Osmanagić, October 2001, HLC documentation.<br />
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He wanted to cut off my ears once. But I was saved from<br />
that by Inspector Debeljević who is from Goražde but<br />
worked in Pljevlja.<br />
Šefko Osmanagić was held for 12 days, and Himzo Tahirović,<br />
Sejfo Osmanagić, Hamed Vukas, Rasim Drkenda,<br />
and Šemso Babić for a month. Idriz Durgut was sentenced<br />
to a six-month term for illegal possession of<br />
firearms. His court-appointed attorney was Nada Šljivić<br />
from Pljevlja. Sejfo was taken in again by police the day<br />
after his release and soon afterwards allowed to go. He<br />
spent the night at the home of Redža Osmanagić in<br />
Pljevlja, and with several others, rented a van and<br />
returned to <strong>Bukovica</strong>. A few days later, in mid-December,<br />
the police once again came to the Osmanagić<br />
home. Sejfo and Šefko escaped through a window and<br />
fled on foot through the woods to Goražde in Bosnia.<br />
Šefko was killed in combat in Goražde and Sejfo still<br />
lives there.<br />
5.5.3.2. Elderly couple beaten<br />
After Šefko and Sejfo had fled, the military and police<br />
frequently came to their home in Čerjenci, questioning<br />
their mother Hajrija, father Šaćir and underage brother<br />
Ševal about their whereabouts and weapons. Hahrija<br />
recounted:<br />
I recognized the soldiers and police reservists who tormented<br />
us: Aco Malinić, Milorad Brković, Dragan<br />
Danilović, Radenko Ristanović, Savo Danilović, Goran<br />
Kovačević, and the policeman Slaviša Svrkota. Sometime<br />
in April 1993, after the mosque in Plansko village<br />
was torched, the army reservists Ristanović, who is from<br />
the <strong>Bukovica</strong> village Srećanje, and Milorad Brković,<br />
who is from Lugovi, came to our house and led my husband<br />
Šaćir to the stable. They kicked him and beat him
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with clubs. Brković threw him down on his back and<br />
jumped up and down on him. They beat me and twisted<br />
my arm that day. Brane Vrećo from Selište, also an<br />
army reservist, was there too. He grabbed me by the hair<br />
and threw me on the ground, and made me sing Chetnik<br />
songs. As this was going on, Aco Malinić came with<br />
a dead and gutted fox, put it on our doorstep and said<br />
we were to leave it there. We took all this very hard, and<br />
me and my husband saw there was no life for us in<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> anymore. So we made up our minds to leave<br />
and, on 10 May 1993, went by foot to Goražde, leaving<br />
everything we owned behind. My husband Šaćir was<br />
always sick after what happened. He died in great pain<br />
in Goražde on 19 November 1995. 68<br />
A few days after being repaired, Ismet Osmanagić’s house<br />
was again destroyed in 1997 (photo: 30 April 2002)<br />
68 Statement by Hajrija Osmanagić, refugee center in Goražde, 11<br />
October 2001, HLC documentation<br />
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6. Muslim Offensive on Čajniče<br />
On 15 February 1993, the Belgrade daily Politika carried<br />
a state news agency Tanjug report on the military success<br />
of the Bosnian Serb army at Čajniče. 69 According to<br />
the report, Bosnian Serb forces repelled a threepronged<br />
attack by Muslim troops coming from<br />
Goražde and Rudo in Bosnia and from the Serb’s rear,<br />
that is, from Yugoslav territory. The agency added that<br />
250 of the Muslim combatants were from Montenegrin<br />
villages along the border with Bosnia. Carrying the<br />
report, Monitor commented: ”At the height of the offensive<br />
on Čajniče, which is some 55 kilometers from Pljevlja,<br />
the Belgrade media reported that about 250 Muslims,<br />
who are allegedly responsible for crimes committed<br />
in the area, are taking part in the attack. Reacting to<br />
this, Serb parties in Pljevlja, which are under the direct<br />
control of military intelligence, demanded from the<br />
Montenegrin authorities a list of these Muslims, laying<br />
the groundwork for even more fantastic accusations<br />
against Bulatović who is supposedly infiltrating Muslim<br />
irredentists into ‘Serb Bosnia.’“<br />
That same day, Bosnian Serb soldiers kidnapped five<br />
members of the Bungur family from Kruševci village:<br />
two women and three children, of whom two very<br />
young. On 16 February, another six Bungurs were taken<br />
from Ravni, all over the age of 70. Latif Bungur (95) was<br />
killed in the course of this abduction.<br />
The Montenegrin authorities mentioned the <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
abductions for the first time on 6 March when the Minister<br />
of Internal Affairs said in Parliament, ”All we have<br />
are some indications that a number of persons from<br />
69 ”Attack From Montenegrin Side,“ Politika, Belgrade, 15 February 1993.
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<strong>Bukovica</strong> have disappeared. 70 When Parliament convened<br />
again on 17 March, Minister Pejaković said:<br />
Thanks to the selfless activities of the security agencies<br />
of Montenegro and the VJ and, in particular, the intensive<br />
efforts of Presidents Bulatović, Ćosić and<br />
Karadžić 71, six of the 12 abducted persons of Muslim<br />
nationality have been returned. The remaining six,<br />
against whom the Republika Srpska police have filed<br />
criminal charges, will be returned and handed over to<br />
the Montenegrin police and judicial authorities within<br />
a day or two. 72<br />
Monitor reacted by pointing out that the Minister had neglected<br />
to give any details about the abducted <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Muslims such as their sex and age, which would have<br />
uncovered the truth of the matter. It named the abductees<br />
who were returned to Montenegro on 23 March as Delva<br />
(76), Lamka (80), Vezira (81), Osmo (68), Almasa (68) and<br />
Sevda Bungur (62); and those detained on suspicion of<br />
”criminal acts against the Republika Srpska“ as Rami<strong>za</strong><br />
Bungur (49), her son Mamko (15), daughter-in-law Zlatija<br />
(25) and Zlatija’s two small children.<br />
A month after the abductions, Pljevlja Police Chief Radivoje<br />
Aranitović said the <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims had been<br />
abducted because their relatives were involved in the<br />
offensive on Čajniče on 14 February and the crimes in<br />
that area against Serbs:<br />
After perpetrating crimes against Serbs in the Čajniče<br />
area on 14 February 1993, a large group of armed Mus-<br />
70 ”When Neighbors Beat,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 2 April 1993.<br />
71 Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Serb Democratic Party in Bosnia-<br />
Herzegovina and President of the Republika Srpska.<br />
72 ”When Neighbors Beat,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 2 April 1993.<br />
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lims returned to Goražde through the border area of FR<br />
Yugoslavia. Among the Muslim combatants, inhabitants<br />
of <strong>Bukovica</strong> village recognized some people who once<br />
lived in Pljevlja municipality, including several who<br />
had moved to Goražde, Čajniče and other places in<br />
Bosnia 15 years ago, as well as those who had moved<br />
out and joined Muslim units five or six months ago. Two<br />
days after this Muslim army passed through, 11 <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Muslims whose close and distant relatives were recognized<br />
as members of the Muslim unit which committed<br />
the crimes in villages around Čajniče, were taken<br />
away. 73<br />
The police chief also denied rumors that more than 11<br />
Muslims had been abducted: ”It is not true that 28 Muslims<br />
were taken, still less is it true that 39 Muslim citizens<br />
who reside in Pljevlja municipality were implicated<br />
in the crimes in the Čajniče area.“ 74<br />
In March 1993, the HLC was able to confirm the circulation<br />
in Pljevlja of a list of Muslim members of the Green<br />
Berets who allegedly took part in the offensive on<br />
Čajniče on that February. In a letter to the Pljevlja Police<br />
Department, the Bosnian Serb police authorities in<br />
Čajniče said there were ”grounds to believe that these<br />
committed genocide against the Serb population in<br />
Šapići, Trpinje and Ponikve villages. In the event that<br />
they are located, they are to be arrested and the Public<br />
Security Center in Čajniče informed, citing telegram No.<br />
50/93 of 19 February 1993.“ 75<br />
The names of 38 Muslims were on the list: Džafer,<br />
Džemail and Samir (father: Zaim) Bungur; Husein<br />
73 ”Pobjeda“, Podgorica, 19 March 1993.<br />
74 Ibid.<br />
75 HLC documentation.
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(Hasan) Bungur; Husein, Haso and Ešef (Ibro) Bungur;<br />
Munever and Enver (Osman) Kaim; Rahmo (Osman)<br />
Kaim, all from Bunguri village; Ago (Hamdija) Bavčić<br />
from Plansko; Zijo (Derviš) Hodžić; Latif (Emin)<br />
Hodžić; Nermin and Halim (Latif) Hodžić, all from<br />
Brdo; Amko (Emin) Vukas from Vukšić; Šefko and Sejfo<br />
(Šaćir) Osmanagić; Himzo (Rasim) Tahirović; Ismet<br />
Osmanagić; Salem (Salih) Tahirović; Mujo (Him<strong>za</strong>) Tahirović,<br />
all from Čerjenci; Sejdo (Nazif) Močević, Sabit<br />
(Dedo) Močević; Almas (Ibro) Močević; Ibro (Meho)<br />
Močević, all from Močevići; Jakub (Latif) Krasić from<br />
Krasići; Mirsad (Huso) Bekan; Mujko (Mujo) Dedović,<br />
Šaban Rizvanović, Emin Rizvanović, all from Mrčići; Izet<br />
(Mašo) Dedović from Breznice; Hamed, Osman and<br />
Sulejman (Salih) Stovrag; Omer and Vehid (Zahid)<br />
Stovrag, all from Kr<strong>za</strong>va.<br />
On the same occasion, Chief Aranitović said the police<br />
had established that the list consisted of ”the names of<br />
persons who were born here but no longer live in this<br />
area. Therefore, there is no official information that<br />
Muslims residing in Pljevlja municipality were involved<br />
in the crimes in the Čajniče area.“ 76<br />
These crimes against Serbs, which were followed by the<br />
abduction of the Bungur family, are mentioned in<br />
Miroslav Toholj’s Black Book - The Suffering of Serbs in<br />
Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995 in which he says:<br />
The advance on Čajniče referred to by Buljubašić<br />
(Ferid, former officer of the Yugoslav National Army,<br />
founded the First Sandžak and First Drina Brigades)<br />
was in fact an attack carried out by his forces on 15 February<br />
on Ponikve village in the territory of Čajniče<br />
76 ”Pobjeda“, Podgorica, 19 March 1<br />
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municipality. Units under the command of Ferid<br />
Buljubašić massacred five persons in Ponikve - two<br />
women and three children. 77<br />
Toholj noted that Serb combatants identified among others<br />
Samir Bungur from Pljevlja municipality as a member<br />
of the units under the command of Ferid Duraković, a<br />
senior officer of the Čajniče Brigade. 78 The attack on<br />
Čajniče became topical again two years later when the<br />
Belgrade weekly Telegraf interviewed Republika Srpska<br />
army commander Dragan ”Čaruga“ Mastilović who said:<br />
It was then that about 3,500 Muslims carried out an allout<br />
attack on Čajniče; even Staroniće village, which was<br />
at the time defended only by commander Milan Kornjača<br />
and a few villagers, was attacked. When we subsequently<br />
analyzed the event, we arrived at the conclusion that the<br />
Muslims entered the area by way of Montenegrin territory.<br />
Upon returning to Čajniče, we decided to burst into a<br />
Muslim border village in Montenegro and capture a few<br />
villagers to further investigate the whole case. We filmed<br />
the captured villagers so that we have a tape of them<br />
admitting that no less than 200 Muslim combatants infiltrated<br />
into Montenegrin territory before the attack on<br />
Čajniče, and that the villagers hid them in their homes. We<br />
informed the State Security of the Republika Srpska and<br />
sent copies of the video tape to the competent state and<br />
military authorities of FR Yugoslavia and Serbia. The then<br />
FR Yugoslavia President Dobrica Ćosić personally urged<br />
that we return the captured to Montenegro, which we did.<br />
But no one in authority in Montenegro ever said why that<br />
happened. 79<br />
77 Toholj, Miroslav, Black Book - The Suffering of Serbs in Bosnia-<br />
Herzegovina 1992-1995, Svetigora, 2000, pp. 168.169.<br />
78 Ibid, p. 169.<br />
79 Telegraf, Belgrade, 8 March 1995.
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7. Hostages Taken in Ravni Village<br />
This is how Monitor described the border over which<br />
the <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims were taken: ”Who controls the<br />
Metaljka border crossing is unknown at this time. The<br />
place has become an assembly point for the following<br />
elements: military police, ordinary paramilitaries, men<br />
who get together to fight over the weekends, reservists<br />
and other ‘fighters for Serbia.’ The purpose of their<br />
massing is to carry out the horrendous order to ethnically<br />
cleanse the area of Muslims who have been<br />
accused in Belgrade of involvement in the attack on<br />
Čajniče. But few have anything to say about the total disarray<br />
of the Serb forces in the area, which was in fact the<br />
main reason for the Muslim offensive.“ 80<br />
Although roads to Serb villages in <strong>Bukovica</strong> were open<br />
and traffic was normal, no Montenegrin officials went<br />
to the area to determine the facts about the disappearance<br />
of 11 Muslims on 15 and 16 February. An attempt<br />
by an Organi<strong>za</strong>tion for Security and Cooperation in<br />
Europe (OSCE) mission and a number of news<br />
reporters to reach Ravni village was thwarted by the JA<br />
command in Kovačevići on the grounds that it could<br />
not guarantee the mission’s safety.<br />
7.1. Razija Bungur: ”They said they were<br />
Chetniks“<br />
On 5 March 1993, the HLC spoke in Pljevlja with Razija,<br />
the 40-year-old blind daughter of the abducted Devla<br />
Bungur. 81 When the soldiers took her mother, Razija<br />
80 ”Lighting the Fire,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 12 February 1993.<br />
81 Spotlight Report No. 4, Human Rights in Serbia and Montenegro,<br />
HLC, Belgrade, May 1993; Spotlight Series - Human Rights 1991-<br />
1995, HLC, Belgrade, 1997.<br />
57
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58<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
was left alone at home. During the night, she heard the<br />
dogs barking and noises from the houses her neighbors<br />
had abandoned. Serb neighbors took her to Bunguri<br />
where a family took her in. While she was there, soldiers<br />
came on two separate occasions, led out the father of<br />
the family and beat him. Afraid, she returned home and,<br />
a few days later, was transferred to Pljevlja by the VJ.<br />
There were 152 <strong>Bukovica</strong> villagers in Pljevlja at the time.<br />
The HLC interviewed about a dozen and asked what<br />
had forced them to leave their homes. The unanimous<br />
reply was that they fled to escape soldiers who were<br />
abusing and harassing them on a daily basis, and accusing<br />
them of working for Bosnian Muslim leader Alija<br />
Izetbegović and the establishment of an Islamic republic.<br />
They said the abuse became particularly severe after<br />
SRS leader Vojislav Šešelj declared that a 30-kilometerwide<br />
zone bordering on Bosnia had to be cleansed of<br />
Muslims. 82<br />
7.2. Zlatija Bungur: ”Alema started walking<br />
in prison“<br />
A large group of soldiers came to the home of Rami<strong>za</strong><br />
Bungur at noon on 15 February 1993. Rami<strong>za</strong> and her<br />
family were the only people left in Kruševci, a hamlet of<br />
Ravni, some 14 kilometers from Kovačevići. Her husband<br />
Zaim had died a few years before the war broke<br />
out and she lived with her younger son Mamko (15),<br />
Zlatija (37), the wife of her son Džafer, and their two<br />
small children, Amela (2) and Alema (eight months).<br />
Her elder son, Zlatija’s husband Džafer, had fled on foot<br />
to Goražde a few months earlier after being severely<br />
beaten.<br />
82 Ibid.
<strong>Bukovica</strong> <strong>engleski</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 15.3.2003 13:54 Page 59<br />
82 Ibid.<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Certificate on the exchange of Zlatija Bungur 83<br />
83 Certificate on the exchange of Zlatija Bungur (translation):<br />
Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
Bosnia-Drina Canton Goražde<br />
59
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<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Zlatija Bungur recounted that the soldiers immediately<br />
ordered the family to go with them, not giving her time<br />
to dress the children properly for the cold weather.<br />
Some of the soldiers wanted to separate me from the rest<br />
of the family - maybe to rape me. But one, I think he was<br />
some kind of officer, didn’t let them. They swore at us<br />
and insulted us as we went along, and slapped and hit<br />
little Mamko. I don’t know what else went on because all<br />
I cared about was whether my children would get out of<br />
it alive.<br />
Government of Goražde Canton<br />
No. 02.389-361/96<br />
At the request of Bungur, Džafer of Čajniče and on the basis of Art. 171<br />
of the Law on General Administrative Procedure (Sl. List SFRJ No. 47/86)<br />
which has been taken over and is applied as a republican law, and data<br />
on record with the Commission for Exchange of Prisoners of War for<br />
Goražde District, the Government of the Bosnia-Drina Canton of<br />
Goražde issues this<br />
CERTIFICATE<br />
Certifying that the Commission for Exchange of Prisoners of War for<br />
Goražde District on 21 May 1993 conducted an exchange of prisoners<br />
of war with the Serb side in ?ajni?e. Among the exchanged prisoners,<br />
the following are recorded under the numbers three (3), five (5) and six<br />
(6):<br />
BUNGUR (Zaim) Džafer, born 1964<br />
BUNGUR (Glibo) Zlatija, daughter of Halil<br />
BUNGUR (Džafer) Alema, born 1992<br />
BUNGUR (Džafer) Amela, born 1998<br />
This certificate was issued for the purpose of regulating status issues.<br />
CC: Chairman<br />
1. Bungur, Džafer, 2x Hamid Pršeš, B.A. (Economics)<br />
2. Records, 3. a/a
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On reaching Hanina village, the soldiers searched their<br />
captives and took Zlatija’s gold earrings, the only valuables<br />
she had on her. From Hanina, they were taken by<br />
bus to the police station in Čajniče.<br />
As soon as we got to the station, they took Mamko away<br />
from us. The first days were the worst of our time in<br />
prison in Čajniče. For the first three or four days I<br />
couldn’t change the children, who were wet through.<br />
After that, the Čajniče Red Cross came and brought<br />
everything the children needed. Men in different uniforms<br />
came while we were in prison and said all sorts<br />
of things: that they would kill us all, that they would cut<br />
the children’s throats, and things like that. As time<br />
passed, we were treated better. My elder daughter<br />
Amela wore a brace for her dislocated hip. They just<br />
tore it off her so that she now has to use crutches to<br />
move about. She had an operation in Sarajevo. The<br />
younger one, Alema, started walking in prison. All the<br />
time we were there, I was terribly afraid for my children<br />
and it was a great relief when we were exchanged<br />
on 21 May the same year.<br />
The name of Džafer Bungur, Zlatija’s husband, appears<br />
on the list of exchanged persons although he was not<br />
among the captives. Zlatija believes that she, her mother-in-law,<br />
and children were exchanged for two Serb<br />
women from Čajniče, Polka Mašić and her daughter.<br />
Aiša Zundja, a Muslim woman from Foča, and her four<br />
children were exchanged at the same time.<br />
61
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<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
7.3. Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur: ”They sent me to<br />
Goražde to parley.“<br />
Zlatija’s mother-in-law Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur told the HLC 84<br />
she recognized Duško Popović, son of Lazo, and Brane<br />
Mašić, both of Trpinje, Čajniče municipality, among the<br />
soldiers who abducted her. She left behind all her livestock:<br />
50 sheep, seven cows and two horses. The soldiers<br />
questioned her about the whereabouts of her<br />
sons Džafer and Samir, who had fled earlier after being<br />
beaten by police and soldiers. Rami<strong>za</strong> herself was not<br />
physically abused in Čajniče but her son Mamko was<br />
beaten and threatened. During her captivity, she was<br />
sent to Goražde to parley on an exchange, with her family<br />
members as surety that she would return to the<br />
prison. She said the food the prisoners received was not<br />
very good but that meals were regular.<br />
7.4. Mamko Bungur: ”Mother said we would<br />
soon be exchanged.“<br />
Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur’s son Mamko also left home with only<br />
the clothes he had on when the soldiers came for them:<br />
I remember well that they slapped me several times on<br />
the way there, threatened me and swore at my mother. I<br />
remember that Savo and Radmilo Milkanović from<br />
Čajniče beat me the most. Radmilo once hit me so hard<br />
in the chest that I fell down right away. 85<br />
Once the party reached Čajniče, Mamko was separated<br />
from his mother and locked in a cell alone. In the beginning,<br />
meals were irregular but this improved later on. After<br />
one a half months, he was allowed to see his mother.<br />
84 Statement by Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur, Goražde, 27 October 2001, HLC documentation.<br />
85 Statement by Mamko Bungur, Goražde, 27 October 2001, HLC documentation.
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Certificate on the exchange of Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur 86<br />
86 Certificate on the exchange of Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur (translation)<br />
Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
Bosnia-Drina Canton Goražde<br />
Government of Goražde Canton<br />
No. 02.389-361/96<br />
At the request of Bungur, Rami<strong>za</strong> of Čajniče and on the basis of Art.<br />
171 of the Law on General Administrative Procedure (Sl. List SFRJ<br />
No. 47/86) which has been taken over and is applied as a republican<br />
law, and data on record with the Commission for Exchange of<br />
Prisoners of War for Goražde District, the Government of the<br />
63
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64<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
I recognized the policemen Danilo Maličević, Vule<br />
Perendija, Adrija Pečenica, and Desimir Djerić at the<br />
Čajniče police station. Groups of police and soldiers<br />
would come from time to time, threatening to kill us,<br />
make us move out, and things like that. I saw Duško<br />
Kornjača come to the police station. I heard later that he<br />
was the boss in Čajniče. He too threatened to slaughter<br />
us, drive us out and so on. While I was in prison, they<br />
kept asking me where the Green Berets were, where our<br />
weapons were, where my brothers Džafer and Samir<br />
were. My brothers had run away to Goražde after they<br />
were badly beaten. Things became better for us in<br />
prison the longer we were there, and mother said we<br />
would soon be exchanged. She went to Goražde a few<br />
times to set up an exchange. During that time we were<br />
given meals regularly and the torture, both physical and<br />
verbal, almost stopped.<br />
Mamko Bungur now lives in Sarajevo. His mother<br />
Rami<strong>za</strong> and brothers Džafer and Samir are in Goražde.<br />
Bosnia-Drina Canton of Goražde issues this<br />
CERTIFICATE<br />
Certifying that the Commission for Exchange of Prisoners of War<br />
for Goražde District on 21 May 1993 conducted an exchange of<br />
prisoners of war with the Serb side in ?ajni?e. Among the<br />
exchanged prisoners, the following are recorded under the numbers<br />
one (1), and two (2):<br />
BUNGUR (nee Popovi?), daughter of Smajo, born 1944<br />
BUNGUR ((Zaim) Mamko, born 1978.<br />
This certificate was issued for the purpose of regulating status<br />
issues.<br />
CC: Chairman<br />
1. Bungur, Rami<strong>za</strong>, 2x Hamid Pršeš, B.A.<br />
(Economics)<br />
2. Records a/a
<strong>Bukovica</strong> <strong>engleski</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 15.3.2003 13:54 Page 65<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
7.5. Sevda Bungur: ”I heard a shot and<br />
immediately thought to myself that Latif<br />
had been killed.“<br />
Sevda Bungur (born 1935) of Ravni was awoken about<br />
5 a.m. on 16 February by loud noises and shouting. She<br />
heard someone breaking down the front door and, running<br />
into the hallway, saw a soldier who ordered her to<br />
go outside and kicked her in the stomach. There were<br />
many soldiers outside, and she saw her neighbors Delva<br />
Bungur, Osman Bungur and his wife Almasa, and Vezira<br />
Bungur being led out of their homes.<br />
The ruins of Latif Bungur’s house in Ravni (photo: 30 April 2002)<br />
I was alone at home because my husband Mušan was<br />
working in Germany at the time. The soldiers said we<br />
had to go to Čajniče in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is<br />
about 15 kilometers from us. I heard then that all the sol-<br />
65
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66<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
diers were from Čajniče, and also that Latif Bungur,<br />
who was about 90, was too old to come with us. His wife<br />
Lamka was taken with us. I left home with bare feet and<br />
in my pajamas because they wouldn’t let me dress or<br />
put on shoes. We had gone about 200 or 300 meters<br />
when I heard a shot and immediately thought to myself<br />
that Latif had been killed.<br />
On the way to Čajniče I recognized among the soldiers<br />
Nedjo Mašić, who was our neighbor. ‘What are you<br />
doing to us?’ I asked him and he replied: ‘If it hadn’t<br />
been for me, you would have been killed.’ I also recognized<br />
Milorad Vasić from Brka near Čajniče. When we<br />
were being thrown out of our homes, he wore a stocking<br />
over his head. I know him because he used to be the janitor<br />
at the school in Čajniče.<br />
As we passed through Trpinje village, I saw Savo Mašić<br />
standing outside his house and heard him say: ‘That’s<br />
right, my sons, my falcons. Take care of your own and<br />
revenge them.’ When we were about half way to<br />
Čajniče, in Hanina village outside the house of Vlatko<br />
Mašić, they gave us a hard time for a short while and<br />
then took us into some rooms, all of us separately. It was<br />
then that I had to give them my gold rings, necklace and<br />
some money. When they had done those disgraceful<br />
searches, they put us in a bus and drove us to Čajniče. 87<br />
At the Čajniče police station, Sevda Bungur told inspectors<br />
everything that had happened to her and her<br />
group. She was held until 23 March 1993. As various<br />
groups of soldiers came back from the front-lines, they<br />
would come to the prison and threaten her and the others<br />
with death or mutilation.<br />
87 Statement by Sevda Bungur, 15 August 2001, HLC documentation.
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The police most often told us that we were waiting to be<br />
exchanged for Serb soldiers and people who had been<br />
captured. The Čajniče mayor, Dr Dušan Kornjača came<br />
to see us once and said he would have us all killed if we<br />
didn’t help them get out of Goražde. When we complained<br />
that we were sick and didn’t have medicine, he<br />
sent a woman doctor, Dr Tadić, to us. She examined us<br />
and gave us medicines.<br />
Sevda Bungur recounted that her son Šefko, who lives<br />
in Bijelo Polje, went to see Montenegrin President Bulatović<br />
and Minister of Internal Affair Pejaković and urged<br />
them to use their influence to obtain the release of her<br />
group. Sevda now lives with her sons Dževad, Mirsad<br />
and Suljo in Sarajevo. She occasionally comes to Pljevlja<br />
and stays with friends there. The HLC has learned that<br />
Delva and her blind daughter Razija now live in<br />
Goražde, and Vezira Bungur with her son in Sarajevo.<br />
7.6. The murder of Latif Bungur<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
It remains unclear whether or not the 95-year-old Latif<br />
Bungur refused to leave his home when the Bosnian<br />
Serb soldiers came and took six elderly members of the<br />
family, including Latif’s wife Lamka (80), away to<br />
Čajniče. In July 1993, activists of the Novi Pa<strong>za</strong>r-based<br />
Sandžak Committee for the Protection of Human Rights<br />
and Freedoms 88 spoke in Pljevlja with an elderly<br />
woman who lived close to Latif and Lamka Bungur until<br />
she fled the village before the Bosnian Serb soldiers<br />
came.<br />
88 1995 Annual Report on the State of Human Rights and Freedoms<br />
and the Position of Bosniacs/Muslims in the Sandžak- Yugoslavia,<br />
Sandžak Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms,<br />
Novi Pa<strong>za</strong>r, 1995.<br />
67
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Latif-aga refused to leave <strong>Bukovica</strong> with his relatives. ‘I<br />
was born here and I want to die or be killed here,’ he said.<br />
He was killed with poles and sticks. His legs and arms were<br />
broken and his skull smashed in. I saw it all when I went<br />
back one day to check up on my house and belongings.<br />
His body was stuck to the carpet. His face was blue. All his<br />
bones were broken. They say his bones went to Belgrade<br />
and lots of other places. Latif-aga never hurt a fly... The second<br />
time I went to Ravni was when the plums were ripe.<br />
Latif-aga wasn’t in the house anymore, nor was the big<br />
blanket wrapped around him. I heard afterward that his<br />
bones came to Pljevlja nine months later... I went into my<br />
house in Ravni: no electricity, no roof, not a rope or a saw<br />
anywhere. No spoons, no forks. Every one of my belongings<br />
had been taken and what hadn’t was broken. My<br />
sheets, my fire grate, all taken. Not a window left, no doors<br />
on my house - none of my belongings. Latif-aga’s cow was<br />
stuck in the barn and died. His chained dogs died of<br />
hunger and thirst. We know who killed Latif-aga...<br />
The Islamic charity Merhamet attempted to send a mission<br />
to Ravni to bury Latif Bungur. Šukrija Bur<strong>za</strong>nović,<br />
deputy chairman of the Pljevlja section of Merhamet,<br />
told the press:<br />
All our requests to the authorities to bury the unfortunate<br />
man were to no avail. We took advantage of a<br />
CSCE mission for the Sandžak visiting Pljevlja and on<br />
17 March, accompanied by Pljevlja municipal officials,<br />
Montenegrin police, and the late Latif’s nephew Ri<strong>za</strong>h<br />
Bur<strong>za</strong>nović, I proceeded to Ravni with the intent of<br />
burying his remains. However, when we reached<br />
Kovačevići village, some 10 kilometers from our destination,<br />
we were warned by the police and military that we<br />
could not go on as it was too dangerous. They claimed<br />
they couldn’t guarantee our safety if we went on, saying<br />
that they did not have control over that area, even
<strong>Bukovica</strong> <strong>engleski</strong>.<strong>qxd</strong> 15.3.2003 13:54 Page 69<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
though it was a part of Montenegro and Yugoslavia. We<br />
turned back without having accomplished our purpose.<br />
89<br />
Pljevlja cementary where Latif Bungur is buried<br />
In early June, a CSCE mission again came to Pljevlja and<br />
it was agreed with Mayor Momčilo Bojović to go to<br />
Ravni to bury the remains of Latif Bungur on 9 June.<br />
However, just as they were leaving the mayor’s office,<br />
word came that no one could guarantee the party’s safety<br />
and they desisted. Monitor reported that it had<br />
learned from reliable sources close to the military that<br />
”the postponement of the CSCE mission’s trip by failing<br />
to provide safety guarantees was due to the fact that the<br />
VJ was at the time moving a large armored force<br />
(dozens of tanks), heavy artillery and troops to the territory<br />
of Bosnia-Herzegovina to help the Serb forces<br />
definitively to occupy first Trnovo and then Goražde.<br />
The weapons and tanks were from the Danilovgrad barracks.“<br />
90<br />
89 ”Lighting the Fire,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 12 February 1993.<br />
69
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<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Jusuf, Latif Bungur’s brother-in-law, told the Sandžak<br />
Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and<br />
Freedoms that Bungur’s remains were in the Pljevlja<br />
morgue for two months.<br />
We heard that Latif’s bones had come to Pljevlja and<br />
immediately tried to locate them. We went to all the<br />
offices but no one was willing to tell us where they were.<br />
We searched the cemeteries, talked with the grave-diggers.<br />
But no one wanted to tell us. So we stopped looking,<br />
thinking they could not be found. Then a Serb came<br />
and said to me: ‘Latif’s bones are at the morgue.’ ... They<br />
gave me the keys to the morgue. I opened the door and<br />
took Latif’s bones, which were in a plastic bag. I carried<br />
the bag to the place of ritual laving of the dead. I stayed<br />
with Latif’s bones and examined them. Not all the bones<br />
were there, a lot were missing... Killed and left there, he<br />
was gnawed and torn by animals - cats, dogs, foxes,<br />
maybe even wolves... The mullah came and we scheduled<br />
the funeral for the next day. We buried him in the<br />
town cemetery, near the hospital. There were 80 people<br />
at Latif’s funeral. 91<br />
A judicial report of late August 1993 states that the<br />
bones of Latif Bungur were found scattered, with marks<br />
of canine teeth on them. His remains were buried on 30<br />
October, eight and a half months after he was murdered.<br />
90 Ibid.<br />
91 Sandžak Dossier: Pljevlja and Priboj, Sandžak Committee for the<br />
Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms, Novi Pa<strong>za</strong>r, 1996, p. 31.
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8. The Terror Continues<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Ago Bavčić (born 1947) of Plansko village was beaten a<br />
number of times during 1992, and most severely on 18<br />
February 1993 when he was returning home from<br />
Kovačevići with a local Serb, Milovan Srndović. Bavčić was<br />
leading a pack horse loaded with provisions for his<br />
household: flour, salt, sugar, yeast, matches, pickled peppers.<br />
He parted with Srndović at Varošište village where<br />
the road forks. Srndović went to his own village and<br />
Bavčić stopped to adjust the load on his horse. A militarylooking<br />
vehicle pulled up beside him and about 10 uniformed<br />
men got out. He could not tell if they were soldiers<br />
or police.<br />
They ordered me to unload the horse, lay down weapons<br />
if I had them, and raise my hands in the air. I did everything<br />
they said and gave them the hunting knife I had on<br />
me. One asked where my brother was. I replied that he was<br />
in Peć and that I had received a letter from him a month<br />
ago. I showed them the letter. That’s when they started<br />
beating me. Others started spilling the flour and salt, saying<br />
I was taking it to the Green Berets. I tried to tell them<br />
the provisions were for my household and shouted out to<br />
Milovan. One of them put his hand over my mouth. They<br />
punched and kicked me, hit me with rifles on the head<br />
and whole body. After that they took the belt of my leather<br />
winter coat, tied me with it to the car and went on beating<br />
me. I think they beat me for about half an hour. 92<br />
With his hands tied, Bavčić was pushed into the vehicle<br />
and beaten all the way to Kovačevići where he was told<br />
he could go. Using two thick sticks as crutches, he set<br />
off for his village in the dark. Exhausted, he fell a num-<br />
92 Statement by Ago Bavčić, Goražde, March 2002, HLC documentation.<br />
71
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<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
ber of times before he got to Hamed Stovrag’s house<br />
where he spent the night, and reached his village the<br />
next day. He spent days in bed, recovering from the<br />
beating. Zoran Čolović, who according to Bavčić was in<br />
command at the Kovačevići headquarters, came shortly<br />
afterward and brought the knife that had been taken<br />
from him. Afraid that he would again be ill-treated<br />
because of the knife, Bavčić refused to take it back.<br />
Tucking the knife into his belt, Čolović left, saying<br />
Bavčić could come to Kovačević to pick up his provisions<br />
which, he said, were all there although a little<br />
damp.<br />
Ago Bavčić’s destroyed house in Plansko<br />
(photo: 30 April 2002).<br />
The provisions were brought to Bavčić later on by the<br />
soldiers or police. He went to see a doctor in Pljevlja<br />
and was hospitalized there for 24 days. When he<br />
returned from the hospital, the soldiers or police who<br />
had beaten him came again. They pushed his wife Aiša<br />
against the wall and put a knife to her throat, and threw<br />
his daughter Bahra (born 1979) and twin sons Bahrudin<br />
and Sabahudin (born 1981) to the floor to demonstrate
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to them how they would slit their throats. Bavčić identified<br />
Aco Malinić, related by marriage to Novak<br />
Danilović of Kržava village, as the leader of the group.<br />
Bavčić complained to Pljevlja Mayor Momčilo Bojović<br />
who referred him to the police. He went to the police<br />
station but was driven away and warned against lodging<br />
a complaint.<br />
After all that, I decided I had to leave my village and go<br />
somewhere else. I first thought of going to Turkey and<br />
applied for a passport - I didn’t get it to this day. We left<br />
our Plansko on 23 April 1993 and went by foot to<br />
Goražde. We took some of our livestock, three cows and<br />
50 sheep, but half of them didn’t get to Goražde. It’s a<br />
long way through the woods and there are dangers of<br />
all sorts.<br />
Soldiers and police came to Klakorine village in February<br />
1993, searched Muslim homes and abused the<br />
inhabitants. Ramiz Šabanović (born 1920) does not<br />
recall the exact date when they invaded his home. Some<br />
pulled his wife Hatidža by the hair and threw her to the<br />
floor as others beat him in another room and demanded<br />
money. Šabanović had recently sold two cows and<br />
two calves so that he had the equivalent of around 3,000<br />
deutsche marks in dinars in the dresser. A policeman<br />
examined the banknotes but did not take them.<br />
Then a soldier, I think his name was Aco Malinić, came<br />
up to me. He had a dog and goaded it to attack me. The<br />
dog jumped on my chest and tore my clothes to bits but<br />
he held it on a leash so that it wouldn’t hurt me really<br />
badly. I was terribly frightened by the dog. After that<br />
they made me and my wife cross ourselves and sing<br />
Chetnik songs. They also forced me to lick the blade of a<br />
knife. When we had done all that, they drove us out of<br />
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the house and to a stream near by, threatening to cut<br />
our throats with barbed wire if we didn’t give them<br />
money.<br />
When I said I didn’t have any other money than what<br />
they had seen, one of them hit me so hard that I rolled<br />
down the slope and passed out. I came to and they<br />
picked me up and carried me to the road. They rubbed<br />
me with snow, ordered me to get up right away and,<br />
when I couldn’t, pulled me to my feet. When they left, I<br />
somehow gathered the strength to get home - it wasn’t<br />
far off. My wife had already run away to Borišići village<br />
and I went there to join her. 93<br />
In Borišići, Asim Hodžić took in the couple and advised<br />
Šabanović to complain to the military command in<br />
Kovačevići. He did and one of the officers there told<br />
him he approved of all that had happened.<br />
Pljevlja Mayor Milorad Bojović and some international<br />
representatives came to see me after that and asked if I<br />
could identify any of the attackers. I said I couldn’t but<br />
that my neighbor Omer Hodžić had told me he knew the<br />
man who had taken the lead in tormenting me - Milorad<br />
Brković, a VJ reservist from Lugovi near Kovačevići.<br />
Šabanović and his wife were not mistreated after this,<br />
but because of their age decided to go to Sarajevo to<br />
stay with their son Haso. Hatidža died in October 2001<br />
and Ramiz still lives there.<br />
Šaban Rizvanović (born 1922), who was the chairman of<br />
the <strong>Bukovica</strong> neighborhood community at the start of<br />
the war, remembers well the police and VJ reservists’<br />
93 Statement by Ramiz Šabanović, Sarajevo, October 2001, HLC documentation.
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onslaught on <strong>Bukovica</strong> villages in February 1993. On 22<br />
February, reservists Djoko Gogić, Radmilo Djuković,<br />
Slobodan Cvetković, Dragan Jelovac and Aco Malinić<br />
came to his home.<br />
One asked where I had been the last Thursday and I<br />
said I had been making plum brandy. ‘No, you weren’t.<br />
You were taking food to the Green Berets,’ he said. Gojko<br />
hit me in the chest with his rifle butt. It was a hard blow<br />
and I fell down. Then Djuković hit me on the back with<br />
the barrel of his rifle ... I think I passed out ... I lay in the<br />
snow ... When I tried to get up and go to my front door,<br />
Cvetković came up and poked me hard in the chest several<br />
times with the point of his rifle.<br />
Šabanović found his wife Arifa (born 1924) lying on the<br />
floor in a pool of blood from her injured head. He<br />
stayed in bed for seven weeks, recuperating from the<br />
beating, and Arifa somewhat less. Reservists who came<br />
to their house later told him not to go to the Pljevlja hospital.<br />
He nonetheless decided to go and was driven<br />
there by his neighbor Simo Barac. At the hospital,<br />
Šabanović was examined by Dr Vera Bojović who<br />
admitted him to the intensive care unit where he was<br />
treated by Dr Čabarkapa. One day, however, a Dr Cvijović<br />
was on duty instead. He immediately discharged<br />
Rizvanović and sent him home.<br />
When I left the hospital for home, I wasn’t let on the bus<br />
and had to spend the night in Pljevlja. Radoman<br />
Čolović drove me home to <strong>Bukovica</strong> the next day in a<br />
police Pinzgauer. As for my life after that in <strong>Bukovica</strong>, I<br />
can say I had no more trouble. Since I had four daughters<br />
and a son in Sarajevo, I asked the International<br />
Red Cross to transfer me there in August 1996. I live in<br />
Sarajevo now.<br />
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8.1 The death of Hilmo Drkenda<br />
Zlatija Stovrag of Vukšići believes that Hilmo Drkenda<br />
was beaten to death on 27 March 1993.<br />
I saw a large group of soldiers going from Kovačevići to<br />
the border with Bosnia at about four o’clock in the afternoon.<br />
I went out to drive the sheep in and met Zlatija,<br />
Hilmo Drkenda’s wife, who told me there were soldiers<br />
all over the place. After that I saw Hilmo Drkenda staggering<br />
along with the help of two sticks.<br />
Drkenda told Zlatija he was taking a sack of hay to his<br />
sheep when he was stopped by soldiers and beaten.<br />
One of the reservists accused him of carrying food to<br />
the Green Berets, and started kicking and beating him<br />
with a rifle butt, and was soon joined by another. A third<br />
reservist swore at his colleagues and shouted, ”Leave<br />
the man alone!“ Hilmo also told Zlatija that the two<br />
bursts of shots heard earlier had been fired by these soldiers.<br />
Hilmo’s wife Zlatija arrived then and, when she saw<br />
the state Hilmo was in, began crying out loud, ‘They’ve<br />
killed my husband,’ and things like that. I saw blood<br />
coming from Hilmo’s mouth and he couldn’t walk. Me,<br />
my daughter Šah<strong>za</strong>, and Zlatija carried him into the<br />
house in a blanket. I think he died that same night.<br />
Besides having been badly beaten, he was an old man,<br />
75 years old. His body lay in the house for about 10<br />
days because we couldn’t bury him. The graveyard is<br />
about one kilometer from the house and there were<br />
only a few old people left in the village. We - me, his wife<br />
and neighbors Emin Drkenda and Latif Stovrag, both<br />
over 75 who dug the grave - buried him in Sulejman<br />
Drkenda’s yard.
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After Hilmo’s burial, Zlatija Stovrag and the remaining<br />
villagers left Vukšići. She and her daughter went first to<br />
Pljevlja and then to Sarajevo, where they now live.<br />
8.2. Dekare<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
The village of Dekare lies near the meeting-point of the<br />
borders of Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.<br />
Somewhat closer to Bosnia, it gravitates toward<br />
Čajniče for it takes less time to reach Čajniče by foot<br />
than Pljevlja by bus. Before the war, the village had six<br />
Muslim families - five with the last name Duraković and<br />
one Tabaković - and three Serb households - the Tošićs,<br />
Cvijovićs and Jojovićs. Only two Serb families live in the<br />
village now.<br />
Mirsada (born 1971) and her sister Jasmina (born 1967)<br />
Duraković described what they experienced when VJ<br />
reservists barged into their home around 11 p.m. on 7<br />
April 1993. The sisters were in the house with their<br />
neighbors Snežana and Mirko Tošić and Slavko Cvijović<br />
at the time. Jasmina (married name Tarić) believes that<br />
Snežana and Mirko Tošić were responsible for the<br />
reservists coming and that they ”set us up.“ 94 The Tošićs<br />
left immediately while Cvijović remained with the sisters.<br />
As soon as they were in, I saw they were up to no good.<br />
One said they had orders to search the house for<br />
weapons. We sisters said we had none and that we were<br />
peaceful citizens. I know that one of them then asked<br />
Slavko Cvijović for his ID and checked it out. Then they<br />
took Slavko into another room and tied him to the bed.<br />
The reservists were armed with automatic rifles.<br />
94 Statement by Jasmina Tarić, Pljevlja, 20 October 2001, HLC documentation.<br />
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Two reservists, identified by Jasmina Tarić as Slaviša<br />
Petrović from Kosanica village, and the other also with<br />
the last name Petrović, ransacked the house, tearing<br />
apart the beds, moving furniture and lifting carpets.<br />
Mirsada (married name Kubur) recounted:<br />
We were very frightened while they searched the house.<br />
One of the reservists came up to me and slapped me<br />
hard a few times. I saw them beating my sister Jasmina<br />
and that they wanted to rape her. They tried to separate<br />
us. Another one came up to me, I thought he wanted to<br />
rape me. The other one pulled him back and said something.<br />
I was in shock and can’t remember all the details<br />
now. But I did see when the cap of one of them fell on<br />
the floor with two bullets in it. 95<br />
Jasmina continued the story:<br />
All the time they searched, I had the feeling they wanted<br />
to rape us. One of them, Slaviša Petrović, started hitting<br />
me on the head and pulling me but the other one<br />
stopped him and took his rifle. I had bruises and cuts on<br />
my head, face and arms. When the situation was very<br />
tense, I heard someone shout,’Run!’ Us two sisters and<br />
Slavko jumped out the window and ran away.<br />
Jasmina and Mirsada spent the night with their uncle<br />
Jusuf Duraković and joined their mother Hasnija in<br />
Pljevlja the next day. They complained to the police<br />
and were told the security situation was extremely<br />
complex because of the war, and that it would be in<br />
the best interests of their safety to tell no one about<br />
what had happened. The police also promised to do<br />
everything they could. Mirsada recounted that the<br />
95 Statement by Mirsada Kubur, Pljevlja, March 2002, HLC documentation.
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remaining Muslim families in Dekare moved out after<br />
this incident.<br />
Nor did 1994 bring any relief to the <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims. A<br />
number of VJ reservists came to the home of Hajra (born<br />
1922) and Huso (born 1921) Bekan in Hajlovine village<br />
one night in June, looking for weapons. Hajra identified<br />
two of them as Milorad Brković and Drago ”Kalaja“ Kalajdžić.<br />
Her husband gave them his licensed TT pistol.<br />
They took me into the other room. I started screaming<br />
but Drago Kalajdžić put a scarf over my mouth and<br />
held a knife to my throat. He cut my forehead and the<br />
blood started pouring. Later on I saw them grab my husband<br />
by both arms and cut his head with the same<br />
knife. My husband called to our neighbor Božo Barac<br />
for help but no one replied. They beat him with whatever<br />
was at hand, their fists and feet and I don’t know<br />
what else. I heard the words:’Get him down on the floor,<br />
what are you waiting for? Kick him in the balls!’ I saw<br />
that he was all bloody and, as they held the knife at his<br />
throat, it looked like they wanted to slit it. It lasted about<br />
an hour and then they left. I went to my husband to see<br />
if he was alive. When I saw that he was, I tried to help<br />
him even though I was in shock. The house had been<br />
turned upside down, blood everywhere and with some<br />
things missing. The only thing I actually saw was Milorad<br />
Brković take the clock from the wall. 96<br />
A doctor came, established that Huso Bekan had a fractured<br />
skull, injured ribs and a broken hand, and prescribed<br />
medication. A few days later, police inspectors<br />
Nedjo Raonić and Radoman Čolović arrived and took<br />
statements from the Bekans. The couple were not both-<br />
96 Statement by Hajra Bekan, Goražde, June 2001, HLC documentation<br />
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ered after that but Huso Bekan continued suffering<br />
great pain. With the assistance of the Red Cross, the<br />
Bekans were in August 1996 transferred to Sarajevo<br />
where they stayed with relatives. When Huso died two<br />
months later at the age of 75, Hajra moved in with her<br />
son Mirsad in Goražde.<br />
9. Epilogue<br />
The villages of <strong>Bukovica</strong> remain deserted to this day.<br />
The houses - looted, damaged or torched - are uninhabitable.<br />
Another reason why people are not returning is<br />
the fact that although there were six murders only one<br />
man, Majoš Vrećo, has ever been charged and tried.<br />
Džafer Djogo (born 1936), an employee of the local<br />
forestry company, was killed at Piperi village on 16 June<br />
1993. His body, covered with branches and leaves, was<br />
found near the village road. The investigation brought<br />
out that Majoš Vrećo stopped Djogo, ordered him to lie<br />
down on the ground and shot him three times in the<br />
head. Dragomir Krvavac (36), a native of Rosulje village<br />
in Pljevlja municipality and a refugee from Sarajevo<br />
who was present when Djogo was killed, was arrested<br />
together with Vrećo. Pljevlja Police Chief Radivoje Aranitović<br />
said the killer was probably returning from the<br />
front-line in the Republika Srpska and that he was intoxicated<br />
when he committed the crime. Vrećo (37), a<br />
native of Leovo Brdo near Pljevlja and a resident of<br />
Čajniče, was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in<br />
prison; Krvavac was acquitted.<br />
In November 2002, the HLC learned at the Montenegrin<br />
Supreme Court that Majoš Vrećo was first sentenced to<br />
four and a half years by the Municipal Court in Belo<br />
Polje and that the term was subsequently increased to<br />
14 years by the Bijelo Polje High Court. The sentence<br />
became final on 7 November 1994. Vrećo was in the
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penitentiary at Spuž near Podgorica until 19 April 1995<br />
when he was transferred to the Foča penitentiary in<br />
Bosnia-Herzegovina to serve out his term. The Republika<br />
Srpska president reduced his term by 10 months 24<br />
days on 30 December 1998 (Glasnik Republike Srpske,<br />
No. 40, 1998), and the Montenegrin president by a further<br />
two years, one month, 20 days on 12 December<br />
2001 (Službeni list RCG, No. 57/2000). Vrećo is due to be<br />
released on 17 November 2004. 97<br />
Memorial plaque at the scene of Džafer Djogo’s murder<br />
Jakub Durgut told the HLC that Džaka Bijela, a 70-year-old<br />
woman from Hromac village, disappeared in June 1995.<br />
I know that two men in uniform came to see her two<br />
days before she went missing, demanding money and<br />
97 Data obtained by HLC researcher at Montenegrin Supreme Court,<br />
Podgorica.<br />
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her husband’s pistol. Her husband had been dead for a<br />
year. She was afraid to be alone in the house after that<br />
and spent the next night with an Orthodox neighbor.<br />
She went home to feed the livestock the next day and has<br />
not been seen or heard from since. Her disappearance<br />
was immediately reported to the Pljevlja Police Department<br />
but the investigation produced no results. In<br />
November that year, some villagers found her about one<br />
kilometer from her house. Police from Pljevlja came to<br />
investigate and established that the body was headless.<br />
Some gold jewelry and money in deutsche marks was<br />
found beside her. 98<br />
10. Homes Torched To Prevent Return<br />
Ten empty Muslim-owned houses in Bunguri village<br />
were set on fire in May 1995. In its 1995 annual report,<br />
the Sandžak Committee on the Protection of Human<br />
Rights and Freedoms said: ”This latest burning of houses<br />
by Serbs and Montenegrins came after several persons<br />
belonging to the Bosniac community tried to<br />
return to their homes from which they were expelled in<br />
February and March 1993. Witnesses say that houses in<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> that were not torched or blown up were damaged,<br />
that even the windows and doors were stolen, as<br />
well as the household appliances, furniture and other<br />
belongings in them. It sounds incredible but, in parallel<br />
with this arson, the Pljevlja municipal authorities sent<br />
the expelled Bosniacs notifications to pay taxes on their<br />
property, land, etc.“ 99<br />
98 Statement by Jakub Durgut, June 2001, HLC documentation.<br />
99 1995 Annual Report on the State of Human Rights and Freedoms<br />
and the Position of Bosniacs/Muslims in the Sandžak- Yugoslavia,<br />
Sandžak Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms,<br />
Novi Pa<strong>za</strong>r, 1995.
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In an interview with Monitor, Jakub Durgut spoke of<br />
why <strong>Bukovica</strong> villagers have not been able to return to<br />
their homes. Like some others, Durgut’s house was<br />
repaired with donations from foreign humanitarian<br />
organi<strong>za</strong>tions and he was handed the keys in 1996:<br />
Only two weeks after our houses were repaired,<br />
‘unknown perpetrators’ destroyed them again. The<br />
state, the Army, and the police were all present. It has<br />
become an illusion to expect the people of <strong>Bukovica</strong> to<br />
return to their homes. This is our third pogrom in this<br />
century. We see the biggest extremists, men who have<br />
committed atrocities, walking freely in Pljevlja and the<br />
state is not doing anything to catch and punish them. 100<br />
The majority of the some 170 displaced <strong>Bukovica</strong> villagers<br />
continue living in Bosnia-Herzegovina or west<br />
European countries. Only a few families that sought<br />
refuge in Pljevlja have tried, without success, to return<br />
to their homes. The only exception is Osman Tahirbegović<br />
who, after two failed attempts, was finally able to<br />
return to his property. With the assistance of Swiss Disaster<br />
Relief, the Muslim charity Merhamet was able to<br />
repair six houses.<br />
The attitude of the Montenegrin state authorities<br />
towards the people of <strong>Bukovica</strong> is amply illustrated by a<br />
decision of the Office of the Commissioner for Displaced<br />
Persons that people forced to move to other<br />
places in their own municipality, as is the case of the<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> villagers now in Pljevlja, are not entitled to displaced<br />
person status. Commenting on this decision,<br />
Monitor wrote: ”Like all other displaced, these people<br />
need humanitarian relief, health care and other living<br />
100 ”Ethnic Cleansing by Neighbors,“ Monitor, Podgorica, 29 December<br />
2000/5 January 2002.<br />
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conditions in accordance with their requirements and<br />
the real possibilities.“ 101<br />
11. Mosques Destroyed<br />
The ruins of the Plansko mosque<br />
(photo: 30 April 1992)<br />
The minaret of the mosque in Raščići village was blown<br />
up on 20 May 1993. Somewhat earlier, on 19 April, the<br />
mosque in Plansko was set on fire and destroyed. Ago<br />
Bavčić recounted to the HLC 102 that he and Krsto<br />
Danilović from Meljene village went to Rudiće that day.<br />
After finishing their business, they made their way back<br />
and, passing by the Plansko mosque at about 3 p.m.,<br />
they noticed the open wooden shutters on the windows<br />
and smoke billowing out.<br />
101 Ibid.<br />
102 Statement by Ago Bavčić, Goražde, March 2002, HLC documentation.
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The ruins of the Plansko mosque<br />
photographed from different angle<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
When we passed that way earlier in the day, we saw that<br />
the shutters were closed and nothing unusual going on.<br />
I suggested to Krsto that we try to put out the fire but he<br />
replied, ‘I don’t dare; you go if you want.’ I didn’t go<br />
either. It was dark by the time I reached home and the<br />
mosque was all in flames; the roof had caught on fire<br />
too. It burned all night. After that, me and my family<br />
were afraid to be in our house at night and slept in a<br />
nearby copse.<br />
85
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APPENDIX<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> Refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
The Montenegrin government’s Trade and Information<br />
Mission in Sarajevo contacted the inhabitants of <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
villages who left their homes during the war in<br />
Bosnia-Herzegovina and made a list of their property.<br />
This list, said the Mission head Novak Kilibarda, ”can<br />
serve as a basis for preparing a government decision<br />
that is expected to resolve this problem.“ Hoping to<br />
ensure full support for the return of these refugees, the<br />
Mission in early February 2002 addressed the Montenegrin<br />
President, Minister of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry<br />
for Protection of the Rights of National and Ethnic<br />
Groups.<br />
Recalling the statements of the <strong>Bukovica</strong> refugees on<br />
the large presence of Yugoslav Army troops, including<br />
reservists, and police officers from Pljevlja in the area<br />
from the outbreak of the war in Bosnia, the Mission said<br />
in its letter:<br />
„The searches of homes on a daily basis, accompanied<br />
by verbal and physical abuse, killings, and looting of<br />
property in fact put Muslims under pressure to leave<br />
the area. The majority of <strong>Bukovica</strong> inhabitants had<br />
moved out by the end of 1992, first to Pljevlja and then<br />
to Turkey, Germany and other countries. Those who are<br />
in Bosnia-Herzegovina came mainly after the end of the<br />
war and continue living here without material means.“<br />
In April 2002, Montenegrin Minister for Protection of<br />
the Rights of National and Ethnic Groups Šaim Hajdinaga<br />
informed the Sarajevo Mission that the setting up of<br />
a commission comprising officials of the Ministry of
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Internal Affairs, Foreign Ministry and his own Ministry<br />
had been agreed with the Prime Minister and Minister<br />
of Internal Affairs. The commission, Hajdinaga said,<br />
would be charged with drawing up a report on the<br />
refugees from the <strong>Bukovica</strong> area.<br />
In a letter to the Montenegrin authorities, people from<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> now in Sarajevo and Goražde wrote that their<br />
only wish was to return to their homes. In order that this<br />
could be achieved, they said, it was necessary to ”arrest<br />
those who committed atrocities and bring them to justice;<br />
create appropriate safety and security conditions<br />
by hiring new police officers who would do their job in<br />
a professional manner, dismiss their predecessors and<br />
take action against them for what they did; repair or<br />
rebuild our houses and recompense us for our property<br />
which was plundered or destroyed during the ethnic<br />
cleansing.“<br />
List of refugees in Bosnia-Herzegovina and<br />
their property compiled by the Montenegrin<br />
Trade and Information Mission in Sarajevo:<br />
1. Durgut, Osman (born 2 July 1954), Čerjenci, fled in<br />
September 1992, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Durgut, Fazila (born 21 November 1956), his wife;<br />
Durgut, Edin (born 27 March 1976), son;<br />
Durgut, Edisa (born 16 September 1978), daughter.<br />
Property: House and outbuildings, furniture and all<br />
other household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House, outbuildings and all other<br />
belongings burnt and destroyed.<br />
*<br />
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2. Durgut, Zajko, Čerjenci, fled in September 1992,<br />
now in Sarajevo;<br />
Durgut, Hajra, his mother.<br />
Property: House and outbuildings, furniture and all<br />
other household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House, outbuildings and other household<br />
belongings badly damaged.<br />
*<br />
3. Tahirović, Himzo (born 26 June 1929), Čerjenci,<br />
fled in September 1992, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Tahirović, Hajra (born 12 June 1936), wife;<br />
Tahirović, Ferida (born 12 June 1963), daughter-inlaw,<br />
and her Two children.<br />
Property: House and outbuildings, furniture and other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
belongings plundered.<br />
*<br />
4. Hodžić, Vasvija (born 30 August 1950), Stražice,<br />
fled in September 1992, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Hodžić, Nedžad (born 10 April 1972), her son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other household belongings plundered.
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*<br />
5. Stovrag, Zlatija (born 14 October 1933), Čerjenci,<br />
fled in September 1992, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Stovrag, Šah<strong>za</strong>, her daughter.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered.<br />
Note: Himzo Stovrag, Zlatija’s husband, committed suicide<br />
in 1992 after he was abused by police.<br />
*<br />
6. Močević, Hamid (born 5 January 1908) Stražice,<br />
fled in 1992, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Močević, Mulija, his wife.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered.<br />
*<br />
7. Hodžić, Arif (born 28 November 1918), Stražice,<br />
fled in September 1992, now in Sarajevo.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered.<br />
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*<br />
8. Močević, Nazif (born 30 March 1923), Močevići,<br />
now in Goražde;<br />
Močević, Zlata, his wife.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered.<br />
*<br />
9. Stovrag, Munir (born 5 February 1956), Kržava, fled<br />
in September 1992;<br />
Stovrag, Hajra, his mother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered.<br />
*<br />
10. Bavčić, Nura (born 12 February 1927), Plansko, fled<br />
in September 1992, now in Goražde;<br />
Bavčić, Jasmina, her daughter.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
11. Hodžić, Halim (born 4 May 1938), Stražice, fled in<br />
September 1992, now in Goražde
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Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
12. Bavčić, Ago (born 8 March 1947), Plansko, fled in<br />
February 1993), now in Goražde;<br />
Bavčić, Aiša, his wife;<br />
Bavčić, Bahra, daughter;<br />
Bavčić, Bahrudin, son;<br />
Bavčić, Fahrudin, son;<br />
Bavčić, Hamdija, son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
13. Hodžić, Latif, Stražice, now in Goražde;<br />
Hodžić, Fadila, his wife, and<br />
Three children.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: VJ reservists robbed this family of a large amount<br />
of currency.<br />
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*<br />
14. Osmanagić, Sejfo (born 3 October 1970), Čerjenci,<br />
fled in April 1993, now in Goražde;<br />
Osmanagić, Hajrija (born 4 April 1943), his mother;<br />
Osmanagić, Ševal (born 20 October 1978), brother;<br />
Osmanagić, Ševka, sister,<br />
Osmanagić, Šemsa, sister.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Šaćir Osmanagić, Sejfo’s father, was subjected to<br />
brutal verbal and physical abuse following which he<br />
died.<br />
*<br />
15. Šahman, Edhem (born 12 March 1964), Čerjenci,<br />
now in Sarajevo;<br />
Šahman, Ibro, his brother;<br />
Šahman, Mehmed, brother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
16. Vukas, Hamed (born 16 September 1969), Čerjenci,<br />
now in Goražde;<br />
Vukas, Alma, his mother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.
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Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
17. Bavčić, Sabrija, Djenovići, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Bavčić, Emina, his wife;<br />
Bavčić, Halima, his mother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
18. Drkenda, Enes, Vukšići, fled in 1993; now in<br />
Bosnia-Herzegovina<br />
Drkenda, Aziz, his brother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings, livestock.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Hilmo Drkenda was killed in his house in 1993<br />
and his wife Zlatija subsequently died.<br />
*<br />
19. Šabanović, Ramiz (born 13 March 1921), Klakorine,<br />
now in Sarajevo.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered or destroyed.<br />
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*<br />
20. Stovrag, Hamed (born 25 November 1958), Kržava,<br />
fled in late 1992, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Stovrag, Džemila, his wife.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
21. Kožo, Zaim (born 16 May 1956), Kovačevići, fled in<br />
early 1993, now in Visoko;<br />
Kožo, Hadžira (born 18 February 1956), his wife,<br />
and their three children;<br />
Kožo, Muša, Zaim’s mother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
22. Jusufović, Fatima (born 15 September 1929), Selišta,<br />
fled in late 1992, now in Goražde;<br />
Jusufović, Edhem, her son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.
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*<br />
23. Rogo, Juso (born 8 July 1949), Kržava, now in<br />
Goražde; and four family members.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
24. Vranj, Samija (born 5 March 1955), Kovačevići, now<br />
in Sarajevo;<br />
Vranj, Samir (born 12 March 1976), her son;<br />
Vranj, Kemo, son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
25. Čutuna, Hatidža (born 3 March 1935), Lugovi, now<br />
in Pa<strong>za</strong>rić near Sarajevo;<br />
Čutuna, Mugdin (born 4 September 1975), her son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
26. Čutuna, Behka (born 29 June 1939), Lugovi, now in<br />
Sarajevo.<br />
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Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Sakib Čutuna, Behka’s husband, was physically<br />
abused on several occasions in 1992 and 1993 and subsequently<br />
died.<br />
*<br />
27. Vukas, Nura (born 28 March 1920), Ljuta Bara, now<br />
in Sarajevo.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture, farm machinery,<br />
tools, livestock, etc.<br />
Present situation: House badly damaged, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
28. Dedović, Meho (born 27 November 1926), Rujevica,<br />
now in Sarajevo.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture, livestock, and<br />
all other household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Dedović’s wife Šaćira died after the war.<br />
*<br />
29. Dedović, Nazif (born 1914), Rujevica, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Dedović, Kenda, his wife;<br />
Dedović, Hasan, son;<br />
Dedović, Ševal, son.
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Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House burnt and destroyed, other<br />
belongings plundered.<br />
*<br />
30. Rizvanović, Šaban (born 6 July 1922), Mrčići, now<br />
in Sarajevo;<br />
Rizvanović, Arifa (born 5 March 1924), his wife.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered.<br />
*<br />
31. Rizvanović, Nedžiba (born 7 February 1940), Mrčići,<br />
now in Goražde;<br />
Rizvanović, Enko, her son;<br />
Rizvanović, Sadeta, daughter;<br />
Rizvanović, Sabaheta, daughter;<br />
Rizvanović, Sabiha, daughter.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Nedžiba’s husband Emin died during the war.<br />
*<br />
32. Bungur, Rami<strong>za</strong> (born 26 June 1944), Bunguri, now<br />
in Goražde;<br />
Bungur, Džafer, her son;<br />
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Bungur, Zlatija, Džafer’s wife, and their<br />
Four children;<br />
Bungur, Samir, Rami<strong>za</strong>’s son,<br />
Bungur Samira, Samir’s wife, and their<br />
Two children;<br />
Bungur, Džemo, Rami<strong>za</strong>’s son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, livestock, furniture and<br />
all other household belongings.<br />
Note: Rami<strong>za</strong> Bungur, her daughter-in-law Zlatija and<br />
Zlatija’s two children were abducted by Bosnian Serb<br />
soldiers in February 1993 and taken to Čajniče. They<br />
were subsequently exchanged in Goražde.<br />
*<br />
33. Hošo, Ramiz (born 11 September 1931), Klakorine,<br />
now in Sarajevo;<br />
Hošo, Džema, his wife.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
34. Krako, Islam (born 14 May 1964), Klakorine, now in<br />
Sarajevo,<br />
Krako, Sedika, his mother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.
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*<br />
35. Bungur, Vezira (born 1 March 1921) Bunguri, now<br />
in Sarajevo;<br />
Bungur, Husein, her son.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
*<br />
36. Mujanović, Hamdo (born 14 October 1965), Močevići,<br />
now in Sarajevo;<br />
Mujanović, first name unknown, his wife, and<br />
Two children.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Hamdo Mujanović was verbally and physically<br />
abused by VJ soldiers for four days, after which he and<br />
his family fled.<br />
*<br />
37. Bekan, Hajra (born 5 January 1920), Hajlovine, now<br />
in Goražde.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
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Note: Hajra’s husband Huso Bekan died in consequence<br />
of severe physical abuse.<br />
*<br />
38. Muslić, Hasan, Madžari, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Muslić, Salko, his brother.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture, livestock, currency,<br />
and all other household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Hasan’s father Hajro and brother Ejub Muslić were<br />
killed in their own house in 1992. The police have not<br />
yet solved the case.<br />
*<br />
39. Hodžić, Hanka (born 18 January 1910), Kava, now<br />
in Sarajevo.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture and all other<br />
household belongings.<br />
Present situation: House destroyed, other belongings<br />
plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: Hanka’s husband Latif Hodžić died after they fled<br />
their village.<br />
*<br />
40. Tahirbegović, Osman (born 12 February 1949),<br />
Rosulje, fled to Sarajevo on 19 July 1992 and subsequently<br />
returned to Rosulje;<br />
Tahirbegović, Zlatija, his wife, also now in Rosulje;<br />
Tahirbegović, Mustafa, his son, now in Sarajevo;<br />
Tahirbegović, Haris, son, now in Sarajevo;
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Tahirbegović, Emina, daughter, now in Sarajevo.<br />
Property: House, outbuildings, furniture, other household<br />
belongings, sawing machine, large quantity of<br />
lumber, other tools.<br />
Present situation: House and outbuildings destroyed,<br />
other belongings plundered or destroyed.<br />
Note: On 4 May 1992, Slaviša Svrkota, a police officer,<br />
stole the Tahirovićs gold jewelry. The theft was immediately<br />
and on several other occasions reported to the<br />
Pljevlja Police Department and the Ministry of Internal<br />
Affairs in Podgorica but no action was taken against<br />
Svrkota. As soon as the war in Bosnia broke out, the<br />
Tahirović house was repeatedly searched, the family<br />
verbally abused and finally, on 18 July 1992, beaten by<br />
Pljevlja police officer Bane Borović and VJ reservist<br />
Dragan Čurić and ordered to leave their home by 7 a.m.<br />
the next day.<br />
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Spotlight Report No. 4<br />
May 1993<br />
MUSLIM-SLAVS<br />
IN SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO<br />
PLJEVLJA, MONTENEGRO<br />
Tensions reached a high pitch in Pljevlja last year as a<br />
result of increasingly frequent attacks on shops owned by<br />
local Muslim-Slavs and the road blocks repeatedly raised<br />
by irregulars under the command of Chetnik Vojvoda 1<br />
Milika “Čeko“ Dačevic. Dačevic and members of his paramilitary<br />
group, ”Čeko’s Men“, were arrested and charged<br />
with terrorism. Although convicted, Dačević received a<br />
suspended sentence. The easing of tensions following the<br />
trial is perceived locally more as a result of Dačević’s subsequent<br />
election to the Assembly of the Federal Republic<br />
of Yugoslavia and his departure for Belgrade and less to<br />
more effective law enforcement.<br />
Persons interviewed in Pljevlja by Humanitarian Law<br />
Center researchers blame ”Čeko’s Men“ for the latest<br />
incidents of harassment and violence against members<br />
of Pljevlja’s Muslim-Slav community. They report it was<br />
several of these men who on March 27, 1993 burst into<br />
the local restaurant Stari Djeram, demanded at gun<br />
point that the Muslim-Slav proprietor immediately<br />
remove a picture of Tito, and ordered him to close the<br />
restaurant within the next few days since they planned<br />
to convert it into an Orthodox church.<br />
On April 22, S.G., a Muslim-Slav, was beaten up while<br />
riding to work to the Borovica mines. His attacker was<br />
1 A military commander in Serbian tradition
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Jovica Laketić, one of the men tried and given a suspended<br />
sentence together with Dacevic. The incident<br />
occurred in front of the other bus passengers. The victim<br />
says he is sure he was beaten only because he is<br />
Muslim-Slav. He did not report the incident to the<br />
police, convinced they would not have done anything<br />
about it.<br />
In Pljevlja, not even medical facilities are safe from<br />
attack. Late in March, unidentified persons threw a<br />
hand grenade at the dental offices of an outpatient clinic.<br />
The director of the clinic is a doctor of Muslim-Slav<br />
origin.<br />
1. <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims-Slavs<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
Displaced Muslim-Slavs from the <strong>Bukovica</strong> area and<br />
Bosnian-Muslim refugees from Bosnia who have not<br />
been able to leave for refugee centers in Turkey and<br />
Western European countries because of age or illness<br />
are staying with relatives and friends in Pljevlja. <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
encompasses several mountain villages, including<br />
Kovacevici, Borošići, Planjska, Bunguri, Ravni, Klakorina,<br />
Stražice, Čejrence, Rosulje and others. It accounts for<br />
nearly a third of Pljevlja Township. Its population,<br />
according to the 1991 census, was approximately 1,500,<br />
of whom some 65 to 70 per cent were Muslim-Slavs.<br />
This markedly underdeveloped mountainous area has<br />
no paved roads and borders on three townships in<br />
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Foča, Čajniče and Goražde.<br />
After the outbreak of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, local<br />
paramilitary groups and Serb army members from<br />
Bosnia began to raid these Montenegrin border villages<br />
and, at the same time, local Serb and ethnic-Montenegrin<br />
villagers began to be called up into reserve police<br />
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and army units. The Muslim-Slavs in the area looked on<br />
all this with great concern. Their feelings of insecurity<br />
grew when their homes became the more and more frequent<br />
targets of illegal searches and they themselves of<br />
accusations that they were financing and joining the<br />
Zelene beretke (Green Berets, a Bosnian-Muslim armed<br />
force in Bosnia).<br />
On July 1, 1992, in the village Bunguri, a group of uniformed<br />
and armed men beat up six Muslim-Slav villagers.<br />
Shortly after, several of the younger families<br />
decided to leave the <strong>Bukovica</strong> area, believing their<br />
departure was temporary. Early in September, Yugoslav<br />
Army reservists arrived in the village of Kovačevići, saying<br />
they were there to see to the safety of the people<br />
and their property in <strong>Bukovica</strong>. Nonetheless, there were<br />
constant incidents of illegal searches of Muslim-Slav<br />
homes, physical violence to individuals, the confiscation<br />
of licensed firearms, and open theft of foreign currency<br />
and jewelry, and villagers began leaving the area<br />
on a massive scale. Those who remained were mostly<br />
the elderly who stayed behind to look after the livestock<br />
and the abandoned property of relatives. By the end of<br />
1992, more than 600 Muslim-Slavs had fled the villages<br />
of <strong>Bukovica</strong>.<br />
The reorgani<strong>za</strong>tion of the Yugoslav Army included the<br />
decisions to accept exclusively Serbs into its ranks and<br />
to pay them. These decisions deepened the mistrust<br />
among the Muslim-Slavs of <strong>Bukovica</strong>, especially among<br />
those who recognized former reservists who had mistreated<br />
them among the new regular Yugoslav Army<br />
soldiers.<br />
Yugoslav Army forces did nothing to stop a group of<br />
Serb army members from Bosnia from entering the<br />
hamlet of Selište on February 15, 1993 and abducting a
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
56-year-old woman, Rami<strong>za</strong>, a 16-year-old boy, Mamko, a<br />
25-year old woman, Zlatija Bungur, and her two small<br />
children. The explanation given was that the police<br />
from Pljevlja were waiting for them on a nearby hill. The<br />
following day another six members of the Bungur family,<br />
all over 60 years of age, were taken in the same manner.<br />
The abduction of the <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslim-Slavs became<br />
known only after the abduction on February 17, 1993 of<br />
a group of Muslim-Slav passengers from a Yugoslav regularly<br />
scheduled train which at one point crosses a<br />
small piece of Serb-held Bosnian territory. On March 6,<br />
the Minister of Interior of Montenegro told the Assembly<br />
of Montenegro, with reference to the train abduction,<br />
that there were indications that several persons<br />
from <strong>Bukovica</strong> had also disappeared. Several days later<br />
he announced that, thanks to the personal efforts of<br />
presidents Bulatović (Montenegro), Ćosić (FR<br />
Yugoslavia) and Karadžić (the Republika Srpska in<br />
Bosnia), six of the 12 abducted <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslim-Slavs<br />
had been returned but that the Republika Srpska had<br />
brought criminal charges against the rest. Returned<br />
from Bosnian territory were six men and women over<br />
70 years of age. The two small children, of less than five<br />
years of age, their mother, the 16-year-old boy, and a<br />
middle-aged woman were not returned.<br />
Researchers of the Humanitarian Law Center spoke<br />
with the released victims in Pljevlja. According to the<br />
statements taken, ”some soldiers“ came and took the<br />
victims; a woman, Sevda Bungur, was beaten until she<br />
fell to the ground; and 95-year-old Latif was taken<br />
behind a house and was later seen lying there dead.<br />
These elderly people had difficulty describing the circumstances<br />
of their abduction. They recounted to the<br />
Center researchers that they had been told at the police<br />
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<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
station in Čajniče, in Bosnia just across the border with<br />
Montenegro, that they were hostages, but did not know<br />
the exact meaning of the word. Also in Čajniče, they had<br />
heard two Serb army commanders, Duško and Milan<br />
Kornjača, talk about an exchange of ”Muslim“ civilians<br />
and Serbs but did not know anything about it. They said<br />
that the children and the two women had remained in<br />
Čajniče; that they all had been together for a while<br />
before being separated, and that no one had told them<br />
where they would be taken. The old people were afraid<br />
to return to the village: they said that there were bad soldiers<br />
in the village, that soldiers were coming there<br />
”from the war“. They spoke especially about their concern<br />
for the livestock left behind.<br />
In Pljevlja, the Humanitarian Law Center researchers also<br />
interviewed a blind woman who had remained alone in<br />
the house after the abduction of her 72-year-old mother.<br />
She said that the abductors had appeared one morning,<br />
saying they were Chetniks. They returned the following<br />
night. She heard dogs barking and noise coming from<br />
the abandoned houses of her neighbors. Then her Serb<br />
neighbors took her to the neighboring village of Bunguri.<br />
While she was staying with the people who looked<br />
after her, a group of soldiers came, took the father of the<br />
family out and beat him up for no reason. This frightened<br />
her and she returned home; after several days soldiers<br />
took her to Pljevlja.<br />
At present, there are 152 villagers from the <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
region living in Pljevlja. All of them say they fled their<br />
villages to escape soldiers who were being abusive and<br />
accusing them of working for Alija (Izetbegović) and<br />
the establishment of a Jamahiriya (Islamic republic).<br />
They say the paid Yugoslav Army troops, reservists and<br />
Chetniks had become particularly abusive after Serbian<br />
Radical Party (SRS) leader Vojislav Še{elj declared that a
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border zone with Bosnia 30 kilometers in width had to<br />
be cleansed of Muslim-Slavs.<br />
The latest information received by the Humanitarian<br />
Law Center indicates that the number of <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslim-Slavs<br />
withdrawing into Pljevlja is growing. People<br />
who fled the village of Rosulje at the beginning of May<br />
say that an elderly man, Hilmo Drkenda, from the village<br />
of Ukšiće was beaten to death and that many in<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> have been harassed, beaten, or robbed by soldiers.<br />
2. A Delegation Visits <strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
On March 17, a delegation of the CSCE Mission in the<br />
Sanjak, the SDA Serbian Muslim-Slav political party, the<br />
Merhamet Islamic relief organi<strong>za</strong>tion, Pljevlja officials, a<br />
Montenegrin Parliament member, and a member of the<br />
extended Bungur family started out by car to visit villages<br />
in the <strong>Bukovica</strong> region. After traveling several<br />
hours, the delegation reached the village of Kovačevići<br />
where it talked to the village authorities and two Muslim-Slav<br />
residents - two very old men - who had been<br />
summoned for the occasion. One of them, who had<br />
been severely beaten, said he could not identify his<br />
attackers; the other said he could not explain why 14<br />
members of his family had gone to live in Pljevlja. The<br />
delegation gave up its original intention of visiting border<br />
villages after being told by Yugoslav Army officers<br />
that they were unable to guarantee the safety of the<br />
CSCE Mission, especially in the village of Ravni, in view<br />
of the possibility of attacks across the border by Bosnian-Muslim<br />
forces. No delegation or journalist has ever<br />
reached Ravni. Nonetheless, Pljevlja authorities and displaced<br />
persons from Ravni confirm that the body of<br />
Latif Bungur still lies unburied in the village.<br />
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3. Dekare<br />
The last three Muslim-Slav families have left the village<br />
of Dekare. The nine members of these last families fled<br />
to Pljevlja after an incident that occurred on April 7.<br />
According to an eyewitness, at around 11 p.m. on that<br />
date, two armed men in combat dress burst into the<br />
house of P.S., shouting that they were soldiers of the<br />
Army of Yugoslavia. When they discovered a Serb<br />
among the Muslim-Slavs, they verbally abused him and<br />
then took him into another room where they tied him<br />
to a bed. The attackers questioned the family about<br />
firearms, and one of them turned especially abusive<br />
towards a 22-year-old girl. The other soldier pushed him<br />
away from the girl, seized his rifle and shouted to the<br />
frightened householders to run. They and their Serb<br />
neighbor jumped out a window and dispersed through<br />
the village. The following morning, the scene of the<br />
incident was visited by soldiers from a Yugoslav Army<br />
command after a call from neighbors. The commanding<br />
officer took notes and told those present that he<br />
would notify the police in Pljevlja. Witnesses of this incident<br />
have been warned at the Pljevlja police station that<br />
in the interest of their own safety they should not speak<br />
about the incident.<br />
Yugoslav Army and civilian authorities say they are<br />
unable, because of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to<br />
guarantee the safety of anybody in <strong>Bukovica</strong>, whether<br />
Serb or Muslim-Slav. They maintain, further, that there is<br />
no real reason for villagers to leave the region.<br />
4. The Abductions from Train No. 671<br />
On its regular, scheduled run between Belgrade (Serbia)<br />
and Bar (Montenegro), train No. 671 crosses territo-
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ry in Serb-held Bosnia. On the day of the incident, February<br />
27, the train pulled out of the Belgrade railroad<br />
station behind schedule. The passengers included a<br />
group of armed men in combat fatigues with various<br />
Chetnik insignia. The train was forced to stop on Bosnian<br />
territory at the village of Štrpci, where a group of<br />
men, also in combat fatigues, were waiting for it. They<br />
boarded the train and, with the help of those already on<br />
board, took 19 identified Muslim-Slav passengers off<br />
the train at gun point. The fate of these passengers<br />
remains unknown.<br />
In view of the Muslim-Slav origin of all but one of the<br />
identified abducted passengers, it may be concluded<br />
that this was an ethnically motivated attack. Considering<br />
that the abductors deliberately by-passed a Muslim-Slav<br />
whose papers identified him as a resident of Priboj (Serbia),<br />
it may be assumed that the target was Muslim-Slavs<br />
from specific areas of Serbia and Montenegro. A Croat<br />
is among the abducted, in which case he was in all likelihood<br />
taken because of his non-Serb origin. Eight of<br />
the abducted carried identity cards issued in Prijepolje,<br />
Serbia, and the rest, identity cards issued in Bijelo Polje,<br />
Podgorica, Bar, Ivangrad, all Montenegrin townships.<br />
...Although none of the eyewitnesses recalls the abductors<br />
asking the victims where they worked, it is to be<br />
noted that the majority were employees of firms located<br />
in Belgrade.<br />
The following persons have been identified as abducted:<br />
1. Esad Kapetanović, 19, employee of Rad, Belgrade<br />
2. Iljaz Ličina, 43, employee of Ratko Mitrović, Belgrade<br />
3. Fehim Bakija, 43, employee of Planum, Belgrade<br />
4. Šećo Softić, 48, employee of ZGP, Belgrade<br />
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<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
5. Rifet Husović, 26, employed in Bijelo Polje<br />
6. Senad Đečević, 16, from Bar<br />
7. Ismet Babačić, 30, employee of Val Strit, Podgorica<br />
8. Halil Zupčević, 49, refugee from Trebinje<br />
9. Adem Alomerović, 59, employee of Raketa, Prijepolje<br />
10. Rasim Ćorić, 40, employee of Limka, Prijepolje<br />
11. Fikret Memović, 40, employee of ŽTP, Belgrade<br />
12. Fevzija Zeković, 54, owner of shop in Kraljevo<br />
13. Nijazim Kajević, 30, postal employee in Priboj<br />
14. Muhedin Hanić, 27, employee of Zmaj, Belgrade<br />
15. Safet Preljević, 22, employee in a private shop, Belgrade<br />
16. Džafer Topuzović, 55, employee of Planum, Prijepolje<br />
17. Jusuf Rastoder, 45, employed in Belgrade<br />
18. Zvjezdan Zuličić, 23, university student, refugee<br />
from Sarajevo<br />
19. Tomo Buzov, (Serbian Croat) retired army officer,<br />
Belgrade<br />
20. man, name unknown, from Sjenica<br />
According to S.A., who was saved from being abducted<br />
thanks to resourceful friends, it all began with the train<br />
conductor behaving in a strange manner. As soon as the<br />
train left Belgrade, the conductor, accompanied by two<br />
policemen, went through the train checking the passengers’<br />
tickets. Contrary to usual practice, he wrote the<br />
name of the passenger on each ticket, allegedly to prevent<br />
anybody from taking a free ride. There were many<br />
uniformed men standing in the corridors outside the<br />
compartments. Ten minutes before the train was<br />
stopped, these men became restless and began pacing<br />
up and down the corridors. When the train came to a<br />
halt, three stopped in front of S.A.’s compartment. One<br />
collected the passengers’ papers and called out the first<br />
Muslim-Slav. He handed the man over to a second man<br />
in combat fatigues. Suddenly, there was a commotion in
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
the corridor, and a friend of S.A.’s, reached out a hand<br />
and shouted, ”Give us back our identity cards.“ A<br />
woman screamed and there was the sound of blows<br />
from an adjacent compartment. This probably confused<br />
the man in uniform and he handed the identity<br />
cards back to the passengers in S.A.’s compartment. S.A.<br />
reports that he saw a truck parked along side the train<br />
and the abducted passengers being loaded on to it.<br />
Shortly after the incident, a senior district police official<br />
said that contacts had been established with Bosnian-<br />
Serb military and civilian authorities, asking their assistance<br />
in shedding light on the case. Within the next few<br />
days Prijepolje was visited repeatedly by high state officials.<br />
On one occasion they talked with relatives of the<br />
abducted and with other local persons, whereas on<br />
another occasion they met only with officials. They did,<br />
however, find the time to visit the Fontana piz<strong>za</strong> house.<br />
A nine-member, all Muslim-Slav, Committee for Coordination<br />
with the Authorities has been set up in Prijepolje.<br />
The Committee has organized several civic protests.<br />
A delegation of the Committee has been received by the<br />
presidents of Serbia and Montenegro. In mid-March,<br />
Serbian President Slobodan Milošević visited Prijepolje<br />
and promised the government would take all the measures<br />
necessary to solve the case and punish the perpetrators.<br />
Families of the abducted have repeatedly appealed to<br />
the highest authorities in Serbia and Montenegro, both<br />
in person and by petitions. At first, they were received<br />
by high officials; later they were received by top-ranking<br />
office staff and junior officials. Recently, however, all<br />
these have been too busy for such meetings.<br />
Asked about the fate of the Štrpci abducted, General<br />
Ratko Mladić, Bosnian- Serb Army Commander, said at a<br />
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112<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
news conference in Belgrade on April 9, ”The possibility<br />
exists of this, too, having been a ploy of destructive<br />
Muslim forces in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia<br />
seeking to gain publicity in this manner. The problem is<br />
being investigated and the findings will be made public<br />
as soon as the investigation is completed.“ Bosnian-Serb<br />
political leader, Radovan Karadžić, has suggested to a<br />
relative of an abducted passenger that the abductors<br />
were members of a paramilitary group outside the control<br />
of the regular army.<br />
The Humanitarian Law Center has learned from several<br />
unofficial sources of the detention of Milan Lukić, a<br />
Bosnian-Serb paramilitary leader, in connection with<br />
the abductions. The sources say he was held for two<br />
days by the police but released when his men threatened<br />
to blow up the Belgrade-Bar railway. The Center’s<br />
information on the fate of the abducted is contradictory.<br />
It has reports that they are being held in a former<br />
Yugoslav Army warehouse in Bosnia, in the village of<br />
Musići between Rudo and Višegrad, allegedly for<br />
exchange for Serb prisoners of war. According to other<br />
reports, they were liquidated immediately.<br />
Who is Milan Lukić, the leader of the paramilitary<br />
group said to have carried out the abduction? Milan<br />
Lukić was also one of the arrested in connection with<br />
the abduction of the Sjeverin Muslim-Slavs. The Serbian<br />
Minister of the Interior confirmed the detention<br />
of Lukić ”in connection with the abduction of residents<br />
of Sjeverin“; ten days later the Ministry of the<br />
Interior announced there were no legal grounds for<br />
Lukić’s detention. It had been established, the Ministry<br />
said, that ”his armed presence on the territory of Serbia<br />
was as a person responsible for armaments in the<br />
army of another state.“
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According to the information in possession of international<br />
human rights organi<strong>za</strong>tions and to eyewitness<br />
accounts, there is reason to believe the Lukić group was<br />
responsible for several crimes against the civilian population<br />
in Višegrad. Lukić, Jovan Planojević and a certain<br />
Momir are named as direct participants in the murder, on<br />
June 18, 1992, of twenty-two Bosnian-Muslim civilians on<br />
the bridge at Višegrad. The victims, allegedly, were first<br />
tortured, the men tied to cars and dragged through the<br />
street and several children thrown alive off the bridge and<br />
shot at as they dropped towards the river. The same<br />
sources report Lukić as a participant in the burning alive<br />
in Višegrad, on Pionirska St., of 60 civilians who had been<br />
promised safe passage to the town of Olovo, on Bosnian-<br />
Muslim-held territory.<br />
5. A Second Abduction in Sjeverin<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
On April 6, 1993, Hasan Mujović and Mustafa Polimac<br />
arrived in Sjeverin from Priboj to inspect their houses<br />
which they had abandoned after the abduction of 17 of<br />
their neighbors. Mustafa was standing in front of his<br />
house when four armed men in combat fatigues and<br />
wearing knitted face hoods appeared and attacked him.<br />
He called for help, and his neighbor Hasan ran out of the<br />
house. The attackers turned on Hasan, and Mustafa ran<br />
into his house, jumped through a window and escaped<br />
into the woods. After hiding for a time, he went to a police<br />
checkpoint, waited for the arrival of the next shift and<br />
returned to Priboj in a police car. There has been no word<br />
of Hasan Mujović since. His wife is undergoing psychiatric<br />
treatment, and his seven children are staying with relatives<br />
and friends in Priboj. The Humanitarian Law Center,<br />
in contacts with the police in Serb-held Rudo, on the<br />
Bosnian border with Serbia, was told that they have information<br />
related to this case but are not responsible for the<br />
safety of citizens of another state and on the territory of<br />
that state.<br />
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114<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong><br />
6. An attack on Muslim-slavs in Nikšić<br />
At the beginning of May, unidentified persons assaulted<br />
three Muslim-Slav homes on Rada Knezevića Street, in<br />
the Montenegrin industrial town of Nikšić. The attack<br />
began with shots fired soon after midnight at the houses,<br />
next-door to each other, of Aljo Ćirković and Enver<br />
Kojić. The attackers then moved some 100 meters down<br />
the street to the house of Gane Ćirković. The houses inbetween<br />
are occupied by Serbs, and none showed bullet<br />
marks, in contrast to the attacked houses on which<br />
more than 50 bullet marks were counted. At the time of<br />
the attack, both Ćirković families and the Kojić family,<br />
with a total of eight small children, were inside their<br />
homes but nobody was hurt. An investigation is said to<br />
be under way.<br />
7. Conclusions<br />
The information collected by Humanitarian Law Center<br />
field researchers and analyzed at the Center indicates<br />
that more than 800 <strong>Bukovica</strong> Muslims-Slavs have been<br />
forced from their homes and villages by the violence of<br />
Yugoslav Army members and unopposed incursions by<br />
Bosnian-Serb armed forces in the border region with<br />
Bosnia of Montenegro. The Center is concerned by the<br />
widespread view among Yugoslav Army members stationed<br />
in the region, supposedly to guard the border, of<br />
Muslim-Slavs as members of a hostile nation at war with<br />
the Serbs. The Center deplores the attitude of the Montenegrin<br />
authorities and the public at large in Serbia<br />
and Montenegro towards Bosnian-Serb forces allowed<br />
to enter the territory of another state unopposed and<br />
the crimes committed during these incursions. The violence<br />
against and abduction of elderly people, women<br />
and small children goes virtually unobserved. The Cen-
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Humanitarian Law Center<br />
ter’s concern is heightened by the absence, even after<br />
several months, of any official word on the fate of people<br />
taken from homes and from busses and trains, or on<br />
the identity of the abductors.<br />
The Humanitarian Law Center demands of the authorities<br />
in Serbia and Montenegro that they disclose the<br />
facts discovered with regard to the abductions of Muslim-Slavs.<br />
The families of the abducted men and the<br />
public at large have the right to know the facts in relation<br />
to the fate of the Sjeverin Muslim-Slavs and the passengers<br />
from train No. 671 and in connection with the<br />
arrest and release of Milan Lukić, the Bosnian-Serb paramilitary<br />
leader.<br />
115
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116<br />
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Publisher:<br />
Humanitarian Law Center<br />
For the Publisher:<br />
Nataša Kandić<br />
Prepared by:<br />
Biljana Mitrinović<br />
English Translation:<br />
Đ. Stanimirović<br />
Graphic Design:<br />
Dejana i Todor Cvetković<br />
Printed bz:<br />
Publikum<br />
Press Run:<br />
500<br />
Beograd, 2003<br />
Copyright © 2003 <strong>Fond</strong> <strong>za</strong> <strong>humanitarno</strong> <strong>pravo</strong><br />
ISBN 86-82599-39-2<br />
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323.1::297(497.16) ”1992/1993”(093.2)<br />
<strong>Bukovica</strong> / [priredila Biljana<br />
Mitrinović]. - Beograd : <strong>Fond</strong> <strong>za</strong><br />
<strong>humanitarno</strong> <strong>pravo</strong>, 2003 (Beograd :<br />
Publikum). - 116 str. : ilustr. ; 24 cm.<br />
- (Edicija Dokumenti o prošlosti / [<strong>Fond</strong><br />
<strong>za</strong> <strong>humanitarno</strong> <strong>pravo</strong>, Beograd])<br />
Tiraž 500. - Napomene i bibliografske<br />
reference uz tekst.<br />
ISBN 86-82599-39-2<br />
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