Kosovo Suva reka Trial in Belgrade

Nicole in KosovoDRY RIVER (SUVA REKA) KOSOVO TRIAL, BELGRADE 2006

WHERE ARE YOUR AMERICANS NOW?
October 2, 2006

Today , in the special court for war crimes in Belgrade, eight
 police members were indicted for torturing, killing, looting and dispersing the Albanian civil population in March 1999, when the NATO bombings against Yugoslavia under Milosevic started.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/14/jasmina_tesanovic_wh.html

This specific trial is concerned with 48 members of an unlucky family
named Berisha, who were executed in a couple of hours in a village
called Dry River. The dead included women, children, the elderly:
from yet unborn babies to a 100-year-old grandmother. The Dry River
is bloody and full of tears.
The eight out of ten indicted (two others died in the meantime) are
sitting in the courtroom in front of us. They look so
normal and common that, compared to them, their lawyers seem like
freaks. They are men, along with one young curly haired blonde with
a gypsy skirt like mine.

This morning I thought twice when I dressed in order to be admitted
in the courtroom. My clothes are simply not proper for this country
and its dark history; the best I could find was a black T shirt
with the English word REVOLUTION written on it in big letters of hot
pink.

One of the lawyers looks like Albert Einstein, and the other like
Seselj, the ugly indicted war mongrel currently in prison in Hague.
The chief defense lawyer, who presided as Milosevic’ s judge against
many imprisoned Albanians, looks like a priest and acts like a God.
This lawyer tries to impeach the judge, and to throw Natasa Kandic,
the representative of the victims, out of the court. This tactic is
deliberate legal obstruction, so we wait the whole morning for the
three judges presiding to make their way through the legal jungle.

While we wait in the smoking room, two waitresses comment on some
other terrible massacre, which they know about because the bodies
were transported in a refrigerator truck and buried in the
outskirts of Belgrade. They are appalled but they have to whisper.

My gay icon Milos, who recently dared to publicly apologize
to Albanians for the loss of unborn Albanian children, has
befriended a young Albanian law student, gosh how cute he
is... But my girlfriends are clustering around an
incredibly handsome tall Albanian whose four
sisters and mother were executed. He looks like a movie actor
and smiles constantly. I am afraid of him, he is too handsome and
kind and he is in Belgrade. In his place I would be a beast by now.

I feel painfully guilty and I know life goes on, but he said: we used
to be a merry family dancing and playing music, now we
are telling our children the stories of the past.

Here in Serbia we are still obstructing the justice and telling lies
to our children about our history.

In the court hall we are socializing like a cocktail party. I notice
a modishly-dressed woman: she nods at me seriously. Lord, I
recognize that woman from the park where I spent years
with my small daughter. She used to be a judge. Her
husband used to be the main legislator for Milosevic’ s
criminal state. Now she is here in the court playing a
hostess to the criminals and their lawyers.

I remember how her daughter, the age of mine, came to school
in fancy clothes, driven by a chauffeur, while other
children were fainting with hunger. I remember how the
teacher asked her kindly to stop that practice because her
child was so hated by other children. I remember how I
felt sorry for that child, whom I saw as an innocent baby
burdened by her parents' immorality. Now I wonder, why is this woman
still haunting Serbian courts? Is that democracy, is that
reconciliation of truth and justice?

The first indicted is pleading NOT GUILTY,
saying he expected to get a promotion to a general but
instead he got arrested 11 months ago. He already won
many medals and his family had given blood for the
state in World War Two, says he.

So he tells us his version of history: Albanians were against
Serbs, and NATO in the name of all the world was
also against the Serbs. So he was fighting the whole world.

In the indictment, one of the soldiers is quoted as saying, while
executing the Albanians, "AND WHERE ARE YOUR AMERICANS NOW TO DEFEND
YOU? WE WILL EXTERMINATE YOU ALL"

They're in Iraq, right now (650.000 dead locals said Bush recently), but they did try to defend the Albanians
during those years of Clinton. The Americans certainly couldn't
protect all of them, and only now, years later, are the massacred
people of Kosovo getting their own state as a recompense. It's a
traumatic loss for nationalist Serbia.
The indicted says proudly: Everything is public now, as it was then.
We fought a clean and just war and we never touched a civilian. Our
orders were: better to die than hurt ordinary people.

How on earth can the man say such things after the mass
graves were excavated? Just as I wonder: how can the
American Congress vote for legalizing torture and
placing American soldiers above all civil laws? They are simply
legalizing a future host of tortures and crimes to be done against
Americans and Americans people.

The failed general is proudly describing the fashion details of his
paramilitary cop uniform, his bullet proof pocket-wise vest, his
fancy cap, chemo change... He says: I want to tell you who I really
am.

We are bored to death besides disgusted by his extremely plain small
talk. Are these the guys still running my country and ruining my
life? He speaks like Milosevic and is proud of his dead leader and
his phantom state.

The phenomenon of Milosevic clones all over Serbia beats the
Napoleon mania. The other cops in the courtroom, who are guarding
the eight indicted have sour smiles on their faces listening to
this ramble.

Our almost-general proudly claims how his state-organized troops
in the early nineties were also in charge of repressing civilian
demonstrations in Belgrade.

At the time we protesters did know that the cops beating us were
from south, Serbian refugees from Kosovo, paid very well and
dressed to kill.

They are all younger than me, yet they look twice their age.
Crime is not good for your looks in a uniform.

The handsome Albanian guy says to me: if somebody saves Serbia,
it will be these women who are judges.
Yes, almost all the women in these political trials seem young and
rather good looking. Where do they all come from, I ask myself?
They are trying to prove that it was state-organized
war crime, and that the rot is still there because Serbia
has never managed a clear cut with the criminal past. I hoped
these other women knew what they are doing, because I myself
was about to faint.

So I left the court and went out for a beer.

BURN LOOT KILL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, ME ALMOST GENERAL TO DO IT
October 3 2006

When it comes to his pride, and the duties which brought him
handcuffs instead of a general's rank, the first indicted colonel
in this Dry River trial never speaks of "Serbia." Instead, he speaks
of Yugoslavia.

Slobodan Milosevic, his leader, started the troubles in Kosovo,
declaring in a rally, "Nobody will beat Serbs here."
Yugoslavia lost all the wars at that same
battlefield, and was reduced to nothing but a name.

As the eight indicted enter the courtroom again,
we sit again next to the victims' family. One of the killers smiles
and nods his head at a member of the family.
I am amazed, asking all around me: did he do that on
purpose, did he do it spontaneously? Why? The man who
nodded back, whose forty-eight family members were
killed by that guy, says: We were neighbors. We knew
each other for years.

For all those years they lived next to each other, sometimes even
living together, and then Milosevic, by coining one slogan, makes
one man kill the whole family of his neighbor. Am I missing something?

The first indicted is finishing his interrogation
today: he repeats strongly and solemnly:
he heard from satellite TV and Boris Yeltsin that
NATO bandits were bombing Serbian Kosovo.

That’s what he knows about the war:
he never saw any Albanian refugees, or the long shuffling
floods of people between borders, terrorized by the
Serbian police, whom he himself commanded.

He never uttered that order, the death sentence, for which he is
indicted here in this court: burn, loot, kick them and
kill them... What are you waiting for , for me to do it?
He steps down from the bench with a big sigh, louder
than his speech in his own defense.

He never mentioned the name of Milosevic,
not even once.

His lawyers are cat-fighting the general prosecutor:
the temperature is rising and the trial is becoming a
political battleground, where the wounds and passions are
personal and dangerous. Like these hot days in Serbia,
whose parliament wants to pass a new constitution for "Serbs"
and "Others Living in Serbia," including Kosovo.

The second indicted was the local police commander.
He is directly accused of having given the orders for
executing the above mentioned sentence.
His first words: I believe in this court and its
justice, which will not be political. I expect a fast
and clear verdict of my innocence. Everything I did in those days was
written as a record, as a diary.

As I listen, it strikes me that in those days I was also writing my
"Diary of a Political Idiot," which started when the first Kosovo
riots began. He and I wrote parallel diaries.

He claims he knew nothing of the massacre that
happened in his village, next to the police station of
in his charge. He claims he knew the ex-mayor of the city and other
members of his family.
He says the killing was done by some madman, now dead, that he
didn’t meddle and that everything is written in his
diary, which he neatly handed to his superiors when it was
all over.

My "Diary" was published in many languages, yet his diary is still a
top secret in this country where General Mladic is still in hiding,
maybe in my own street. The chief of the local police admits that
he collected the bodies and buried them -- properly, with
due honors. He admits that his work may have been
neglectful, since he never asked how many bodies were
buried in mass graves, but he denies that he ever
committed a crime.

The family member sitting next to me is now sighing heavily.

HE WAS A NOTHING, JUST LIKE A WOMAN
October 4, 2006

I always like when people in this court utter some sentence that
gives me the title of my text. It breaks the tedium of
sitting in that stuffy courtroom listening to details
of horrid crimes, enduring the disgusting audacity
of the blatant lies of the indicted, which ridicule our
presence in this world and their own, this world where people kill
for fun and never regret it.
These Serbian policemen from kosovo would do it all again,
with even more vigor, even when not ordered to do it. Their
only regret is not having done more and better. That
their regime lost the war. They had to flee
instead of killing all the Albanians. As 10 percent of
the Kosovo population, they had to leave their property to the 90
percent majority. They were Orthodox and
Serbs, the superior race in their holy land, living in
paranoid agression for centuries on end.

The third indicted ex policeman today said this:
"He was a NOTHING. Just like a woman."( that's my title)

He referred to his college policeman, a young “kind
and tender guy” ( his words) who is the protected
witness of this trial, who gave them in, who could not
live on with the crime on his conscience.

In the corridor, I heard a lawyer saying to his wife,
while patting her on the shoulders: Step by step,
we will destroy the witnesses’ credibility. She smiled,
protected: I wonder if she, as a woman, realized she was
nothing?

Other relatives from the audience cannot restrain
their hatred when Natasa Kandic, that heroine of our dark
times, interrogates the witness and makes him stammer and
look stupid. Natasa simply asks him common sense
questions. She is not even a lawyer, but a human
rights activist.
These guys don’t need the law to get indicted. They and their
relatives look poor and ignorant. They've been reduced to miserable,
criminal refugees by a criminal regime which waged its war
against the entire world. And yet, they would do it all
again, especially today, since they now have nothing to
lose and nowhere to go. The whole world should shiver at them, and
be afraid of them.

The father of a murdered girl is here: silent, proud, white haired
gentleman in a dark suit. I marvel at his patience and composed
behavior. The indicted salutes him -- again, as a
provocation .

The arrogance of the blatant falsehoods is killing us all in the
courtroom: well prepared, well organized lies endorsed by a
loud set of lawyers.

The guy today again claims he was not there, knew nothing,
saw nothing... so WHAT ABOUT THE BODIES in the small
village where he lived and worked as a deputy
chief of police? A house full of people was burned in front of him.

He didn’t notice that, he claims, talking of the many details
of his busy day, the food he ate, some petty thoughts he had.
All that in the first days of the heavy bombings of Kosovo, when we
all remember very little but the panic in each other's eyes?

He starts his speech by declaring: as a parent, I swear on
the life of my children that I had nothing to do with
the crime.

After that, I am tempted all the time to believe him,
until I realize he is talking for hours about the wrong
day, citing wrong, hours skipping in a few seconds over the
time of the massacre, as if it never occurred.

His trauma on that dire day was that his commander shouted at
him. The same commander who, only two days ago, claimed
in this court that he was not there at all.

Because the commander also saw nothing and did nothing during the
massacre that never happened.
When Natasa reminds us of the bodies patiently transported
to Serbia, one of the judges loses his patience
as well, saying: I just can’t understand how dare you
testify like this! The presiding judge replies: it is
still a legal defense.

The special troops were never used in Kosovo,
claims the Number four indicted, except to secure the
concert of a minor turbofolk star in Kosovo. And that singing star
was a little nothing of a woman -- she was not even Ceca, the consort
of Arkan, warlord of Tigers and eminence of Scorpions.

CUTIE AND THE BALD
October 5th

If all this were not tragic, it would be comic.

The fourth indicted, pleading innocent today,
is called "Sladjan," meaning in Serbian literally "Cutie."
Cutie is a former secret police agent, and one of the three
ugliest people I ever saw in my life.

His hair stands upright, he is small and all contorted,
and there is something unbearably ridiculous about
him, like a fully dressed man with a tie who somehow forgot his pants.

He not only pleads innocent, but counter-accuses the lawyers
of the victims of being one-sided. Of course the lawyers are one-
sided, because they represent those who are no longer
alive to tell their own story.

Even Cutie's lawyer is embarrassed when the accused,
unable to talk for himself, reads aloud his prepared
statement, with a visible effort. We learn from a short cross
examination that he was sent to the Dry River police
station from some other village -- sent there as a punishment. That
routine disciplinary measure cost 48 people their lives.

Cutie's favorite word, which he uses constantly in
testimony, is "normally." He describes a witness against him, one
who testifies that he was there at the massacre, as "Somebody."
Cutie denies that he had a further nom-de-guerre:
"Eggy" -- as if "Cutie" was not enough.

Indicted number five is an elderly secret police agent with a
flat head, no shoulders, and a mustache like Hercule Poirot.
Notorious in his village for extortion, blackmail and black
marketeering, he sold passports and other IDs to the Albanians, even
though it was their legal right to have those documents. In the later
years of the war he started selling the Albanians their own lives,
sometimes killing them even after they paid him the ransom.

At least that's what the relatives in the courtroom tell me. The
relatives know all of the indicted well, except for Cutie, who grew
up elsewhere. In the years of peace they were sometimes even
friends with those who later became their torturers.
The secret agent opens with a pompous speech: "sorry
it happened," "honorable court." Of course he pleads not guilty,
not present. He admits that he had money and has money;
his family owns hotels, shops, enterprises.

His tasks strongly resemble the assignments of the Third
Policeman character by the Irish satirist Flann O'Brien:
paranoid nonsense and blarney to cover up obvious,
down to earth, lucrative, criminal deeds.

The OEBS mission, the Americans, were staying in his
hotel. Later the mission moved to an Albanian’s house which
the Serbian police later looted and burned. The occupants of this
house were the 48 family members who had tried to hide there after
the Americans themselves fled before the NATO bombings began.

Then the bombs did fall, and everyone started to scramble; Albanians
fled Serbs, Serbs fled NATO, and the military police tried to round
up the Albanians as human shields. So the locals were forced by the
military police to circle for days, much like they did in Bosnia,
before they were finally executed, and secretly transported to be
buried within
Serbia.

The third policeman claims he could not be a spy, or at least not
anymore, for there was nobody and nothing left to spy on. The enemy
was gone... even his locals, whom he could always pinch for a payoff
of some kind. The terrorists, as he called them, had fled with
nothing but their civilian clothes: woman, children, old people, all
of them.

An Albanian journalist tells me an anecdote. The cops never paid for
gas at the gas station, owned by an Albanian. It wasn't until they
went to Serbia that the cops came to realize that police had to pay
for gasoline.

This gas station was run by the first Albanian to be killed, another
member of the famous family. His gas station was confiscated and
handed over as loot to a brother of one of the killers.
That conqueror of the gas station is the seventh indicted. He weeps
while testifying: we grew up together, Berisa was a fine guy, he was
my friend.

The secret agent claims three times that somebody tried to
kill him, too. I believe him.

The secret policeman pulls a newspaper from his bag, claiming this is
the first he ever knew of the killing. He claims he never knew of
this "war secret," a 'secret' that every bird sang in Kosovo. He
claims he is now researching the facts, and as he fumbles his bits of
paper, we all realize how pathetically he is inventing his own
defense, day by day, piece by piece. The character from the book
wants to become the author.

He says: I was a secret policeman 24 hours a day. I tipped
off the police, and a locator was planted inside the house to
be searched. As an overreaction, the police burned killed and
looted. My condolences to the family.

Then he ends his defense, stepping down, only to let the true
executioner step up.

He is indicted number six. The first time I saw him, I felt that I
knew him personally: now I know I don’t, but I do know men like him.
He is bald, muscular, quick and bright, with street smarts. He is
not some ugly normal killer caught up in bad events, but a guy who
can aim and pull a trigger. He pleads not guilty, describing the day
in detail:
If I'd only arrived half an hour later, none of this would have
happened to me.

He was half an hour early from his usual patrol job,
taken into the heart of the action by "Bad Bob," the
authority of that time and place: Bad Bob is now deceased,
so naturally everyone is eager to blame him.
Our witness was ordered to do this or that, but basically, he admits
he saw it all happen. Finally, we in the court know it was an actual
event. The family members, the men women and children, were driven
into a local pizzeria after they were kicked out of their OEBS
mission house. The mission house was set on fire. Then the family
were driven round in circles, prisoners inside a bus. Finally they
were executed.

Their deaths were fully verified with single bullets, then their
bodies transported into a truck by six teenaged gypsy boys. The
truck vanished and the entire action was classified TOP SECRET.

Our witness here was ordered to keep the secret, because it was worth
his life. Only after being arrested did he spill the beans, and,
once again, because it was worth his life.

I wonder what happened to these teenage gypsy boys. Gypsies in
this country work often with rubbish, as professional trash men,
as scavengers. The gypsies in Kosovo were not as hated as
Albanians, just an underclass, collectors of rubbish.

This witness was a local "special policeman." He tells us
about many other non-local special police troops, who came from
inner Serbia to help them ethnically clean the territory. Some wore
black leather jackets, some pirate bandannas on their heads, some
paramilitary uniforms without insignia.

They just did it, all together.

He says: The room was full of smoke, blood all over the walls,
and corpses around. Women and children too. I pretended that I had
finished off a man, because my life was at stake. I knew one of the
dead men. We had played basketball together. Bad Bob was taking
note of every single corpse put into the van. He was neat and
professional, a bad character, but full of authority. He could order
around anybody, and he did. Nobody could refuse his orders.

Bad Bob is dead himself, so he is taking all the blame today.

The chief prosecutor asks him a very simple question:

-But why did you do it?
The indicted answers:
-We were attacked by the Albanian terrorists.

-Did you see them?

-No. I heard their machine guns. They had a different
sound than ours. They were Chinese guns.

His brother, a few minutes after him, testifies differently.

-The bombs were falling. The Americans had left. The
Albanians were the majority. So for Kosovo it was now or never:
AND WHERE ARE YOUR AMERICANS NOW TO PROTECT YOU?
WE WILL ELIMINATE YOU ALL...

MAY YOU HAVE IT ALL AND THEN NOTHING
October 6

It was revenge. It was a massacre... The last witness today
is sorry, he has tears in his eyes, he is saying sorry,
several times...while he is lying, also while he is telling
the truth. What is the difference? He did it, and he
didn’t have to... That’s why he remembers this day.

- I will remember it only because of what happened.
Otherwise, every day was the same back then.

After that memorable day, he got the gas station,
because his Albanian friend Berisha, whom everybody
loved, was killed. Then he lost a war against NATO.
Then he fled his country, his home, his gas station. Now
he is here today in a war crimes court, without freedom,
without honor... no wonder he weeps.