Posted on 07/06/2008 1:08:11 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
BELGRADE - They sit like open sores at the heart of this turbulent eastern European nation.
Long before international fugitive Miladin Kovacevic revived tensions between the U.S. and Serbia, NATO bombs reduced a row of once formidable government buildings here to hulking shells.
The ravaged red-brick and concrete buildings are still standing nearly 10 years after the American-led aerial assault. They represent a wound that, many Serbians say, still runs deep.
"Our people look at America like it's an enemy," said Niko Percovic, 30, a reporter based in the northern city of Novi Sad.
That is one of the reasons, Percovic said, the tale of the monstrous Serb athlete who pummeled Brooklyn college student Bryan Steinhauer and then fled the country received almost no attention here for weeks.
"Nobody wants to say anything about Kovacevic or write anything about him in the newspapers," Percovic added.
But Kovacevic's story isn't going away anytime soon. The U.S. and Serbia are locked in a diplomatic battle over how to get Kovacevic back to upstate New York to face American justice.
A solution could take months - if one comes at all.
International attention focused on Serbia after Kovacevic, a 6-foot-9, 280-pound jock, fled there following a May 4 bar brawl that left fellow Binghamton University student Bryan Steinhauer, 22, in a coma.
The hulking Kovacevic, 20, escaped the U.S. on June 9 with the help of a consulate member, prompting Sen. Chuck Schumer to blast the Serbian government and demand the fugitive be returned. The U.S. ambassador to Serbia this week echoed Schumer's demand.
A month after Kovacevic fled, he remains a free man.
A Serbian prosecutor said the U.S. has still not filed the formal documentation necessary to spur local authorities to act. Even then, Serbian officials have suggested that their law may forbid them from extraditing Kovacevic.
American officials have conceded their best hope is that Kovacevic is persuaded to surrender voluntarily.
One question looms large - why would he?
Kovacevic has been spotted strolling around in a T-shirt and gym shorts near his hometown of Kula, a tiny city in the north with a sinister history.
Located 100 miles from Belgrade, Kula is known as the former base of an elite military unit, the Red Berets, which reportedly carried out political assassinations at the behest of the notorious Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
Residents there continue to view the U.S. with skepticism. Kovacevic's family friends said he was the victim of a conspiracy.
"The most he is guilty of is that he is big," one friend said.
Around Kula's three-block downtown, residents said they were shocked - and baffled - that one of their own had become a headline-grabbing fugitive.
"Was the [victim] somebody famous?" asked a man at an outdoor fast-food shop in between bites of a pljeskavica, a Serbian hamburger made with pork, lamb and beef. "I heard it was just a fight."
Belgrade, Serbia's bustling capital city, pulsates with life in the summer months.
Outdoor cafes remain packed deep into the night with people sipping iced coffees and wine. Hordes of stunning young women stroll past boutique shops wearing eye-catching outfits. Weekend nights don't end until the sun rises.
Questions about the Kovacevic case were often met here with looks of confusion.
"I don't know about it," said a 42-year-old sunglass vendor who declined to give his name. "We have our own problems and they are big ones."
Very big. Beyond the glamour and frenetic nightlife that Belgrade has become known for lies a government in tatters.
A parliamentary election in early May ended with the pro-Western party winning the most votes, but with little hope it could form a united government with its nationalistic opponents.
Two months later, the country is still without a functioning government - a black eye for a nation used to strife.
The police appear to be on edge. On two separate occasions this week, Serbian police ordered a Daily News photographer to erase his photos.
In 1999, Milosevic, intent on driving ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo, sent Serb soldiers and police rampaging into the neighboring province.
Then-President Bill Clinton pushed for the NATO attacks, which killed thousands of Serbs and left several government buildings obliterated. Today many political observers believe the bombing campaign was unwarranted.
In Serbia, feelings are still raw.
Dragana Grujin, 30, said she hates Clinton for the devastation he brought to her country nine years ago.
"I don't like it when people get killed for nothing," said Grujin, a hotel worker from Belgrade. "What America did was not necessary. Everybody here feels the same way."
As for Kovacevic, Grujin's views of the case mirrored many of her fellow Serbs. "There was a fight and the Serbian guy was tougher," she said. "What's the big deal?"
“Had the serbs accepted the draconian terms for having assasinated the heir to the A/H government the war would not have occured.”
Reread your history books. They DID accept the terms. Even the Kaiser remarked that all cause for war was gone after the Serb’s capitulation.
Do you believe the United States is responsible as a nation for anything committed by a US citizen outside of our borders?
Just checking for consistency on your part.
Could the Israelis make demands on us because of Saint Pancake, for instance?
Thus, with that as justification Austria started WWI.
The Kaiser was indeed flawed, bombastic and a coward. The terms he pushed Vienna to demand of Belgade were justified, and once Vienna laid them down the A/H’s could not accept less. The Kaiser backed down when he realized that france,russia and England eagerly sought war.
The hierarchy of the serb army assasinated FF. No, Wikipedia or the Britanica will not confirm it .
Serbia also offererd to put the provision(s) they didn't agree with up to arbitration.
Germany wanted war and they got it!
By the time you speak of the tsar had begun mobilization of tens or twentys of millions of serfs to sack Danzig, Koenigsberg, Breslau, Vienna. Zagreb and Budapest. Whats was a Kaiser to do?
How about turn him over or we just start bombing?
There is a time and place for gunboat diplomacy.
Yep, just like Hitler had no choice after Poland attacked Germany!
/sarcasm>
Kovacevic was inline to be railroaded after reading news and what U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer are saying. It was just drunk people fighting.
When I was young I saw a guy of stature similar to the serb as a friend and I entered an unfamiliar bar. I said to my companion “Jeeze look at the size of that guy”. Soon I was smoozeing with the barmaid. Regettably that guy “thought” she was his girlfriend. He put my friend out with one punch on his way to me, and gave me a very serious beating, But I kept getting up to confront him, thereby escaping the kicking and coma. His “girlfriend” called the police when she saw him coming, who LUCKY ME were in the parking lot of the bar! It all happened so fast, but “drunk people fighting”? Whats the matter with you?
Princip was a member of the Black Hand, not the Serb Army. Nice try, but truth wins again.
You didn’t sucker punch him then?
How about not writing a "blank check" to a lukewarm ally who's about to invade a nation with alliance to the biggest army in Europe?
Of the originally ten founders of the black hand were several majors and coelnels of the serb army ,including the Chief of Intelligence of the Army General Staff.
I’m stupid daug, but not crazy
Funny how it seems that you’re basically emphasizing Kovacevic being a Serb when his two buddies and co-defendants were both BOSNIAN MOSLEMS. Why haven’t you been emphasizing that?
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