Scorpion case

(Zoran Culafic)

The first war crimes case in which Albanian victims testified in Serbia was settled last month- the Serbian paramilitary member of the Scorpion unit was sentenced to the maximum penalty – 20 years by a Belgrade District Court. UNMIK on AIR talked to Natasa Kandic, the head of the Belgrade based NGO “Humanitarian Law Center”, one of the legal representatives of the victims’ families who helped to bring this case to trial.

Hello and welcome to UNMIK on AIR.

The massacre of the Bogujevci families - the wives and children of two brothers, Selatin and Safet - and of the Duriqi family took place on a springtime Sunday morning five years ago, in a neighbour's back garden in their hometown of Podujevo. Of the 19 herded against the garden wall, seven women and seven children died, the youngest

a boy of two. The two oldest of the five children, Saranda and Fatos, survived. 97 casings were found in the yard.

In early April of 2002, the prosecutor in the southern Serbian town of Prokuplje indicted Scorpion officers, Sasa Cvjetan and Dejan Demirovic on war crimes charges. The trial began in October 2002, in Prokuplje, with Demirovic tried in absentia- Demirovic had evaded authorities and escaped to Canada.

At the beginning of the investigation Cvjetan confessed to his role in the crimes, but because Cvjetan confessed without the presence of a defense attorney- his testimony was ruled inadmissible.

Soon after, Cvjetan denied any connection with the murders.

On November 27, 2002 the Supreme Court of Serbia transferred the case to the Belgrade District Court, after the presiding judge and prosecutor in Prokuplje allegedly faced acts of intimidation, from supporters of the Serbian paramilitary defendants. The trial reconvened in Belgrade in March of 2003. Much of this would not have happened without the work of Belgrade human rights activist and attorney Natasa Kandic, who represented the Albanian families in this trial.

Natasa Kandic: We published a report about what happened in Podujevo with our request to change the place of trial and we succeeded. The Supreme Court brought the decision to relocate the trial. After that I started negotiating with the Albanian survivors to testify. They couldn’t imagine coming to Serbia and to see Serbian police. Five children survived and for them it was very difficult. But their fathers understood that justice is very important and only the Court nobody else could bring them to justice and they decided to come. It was in July last year they came.

The case generated more momentum when a police official, Goran Stoparic of the Scorpion unit testified against his former comrades-- accusing them of the Podujevo crimes.

Attorney, Natasa Kandic says Stoparic’s story did not change even when the four Albanian survivors came from Pristina—it was the first time in which Albanians traveled to Belgrade to testify against Serbians. After Stoparic’s testimony, adds Kandic, the Albanian survivors and witnesses approached the former Scorpion policeman and thanked him. But Serbian police and Stoparic’s former Scorpion comrades did not give Stoparic the same treatment:

Natasa Kandic: It was a very serious decision because some of his colleges, members of his unit, they saw him talking to me, and they began to intimidated him and asking him whether he wanted to be a traitor. But at the end he decided to testify and I went to a republican Prosecutor and asked him for protection measures and he promised that he will do anything and he testified.

Even as Stoparic agreed to testify against members of his former Scorpion unit- Stoparic testified that he had been threatened before the hearing… transcripts of the court case recorded Stoparic saying that the unit's commander had approached him outside the courtroom.

Voice: "He did not say he would kill me. He said the consequences would be drastic."

The question of war crimes is not popular anywhere in the region says Kandic. The lack of cooperation she experienced with Serbian authorities did not stop her work.

To date, there are currently nine war crimes cases in front of domestic courts in Serbia. The Ovcara case made international headlines recently when the trial began the accused are charged in the killings of 192 Croatian prisoners in Vukovar in 1992. Even so, according to Kandic, earlier war crimes cases tried during the Milosevic regime were more for show than substance:

Natasa Kandic: The first case was in ‘94 was against one paramilitary Serbian group who killed Muslims in Bosnia and raped one Muslim woman. It was a disaster because the prosecutor exposed the same opinion as the accused. The accused are sentenced but it was only the example that probably Milosevic ordered: you should try some people for war crimes but it was disaster. But after the NATO bombardment, especially in 2001 and 2002 some cases against Serbs who committed war crimes against Albanians took place but all those cases were without Albanian victims and without legal representation of victims.

Since that time the Podujevo case is the first one during which there was testimony from Albanian victims. These cases, says Kandic are not a matter of public discourse- even so, Kandic says it is vital for people in the region to face these acts in history and navigate through their emotions:

Natasa Kandic: There is no public discussion just a small media attention. Many newspapers reported about Podujevo trial but at the time when children testified newspapers like Danas published interviews with children and it was strong but there is no big attention.

That is all for this edition of UNMIK on Air. Thank you for listening and stay tuned for more.