Posted on 08/26/2002 5:49:50 AM PDT by Ranger
THE HAGUE, Aug. 25 — As he told his ghastly story, Bosko Radojkovic came across as a kind and methodical man. For 25 years he was a police detective, mostly working in a small riverside town in Serbia. His job was always to unravel crimes, from cattle theft to murder.
But he was now describing his own role in a gruesome cover-up, so perturbing that he ended up sick in the hospital.
In the witness chair at the United Nations war crimes tribunal, the police detective avoided looking at Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's former president, now in the dock.
Mr. Radojkovic was the first to open a freezer truck from Kosovo, found in the Danube River in 1999. It held 86 bludgeoned and mangled bodies, presumed to be of Kosovo Albanians.
The event was kept secret until last year, when Belgrade suddenly disclosed details of that and other mass killings in the Albanian-populated province of Kosovo in southern Serbia. Belgrade was apparently paving the way for sending Mr. Milosevic to face war crimes charges in The Hague.
Now prosecutors say that Mr. Radojkovic's testimony about the truck, presented in late July just before the tribunal took a short summer break, is central to their case that war crimes were committed in Kosovo and that Mr. Milosevic ordered the evidence removed. Mr. Milosevic's trial, which began in February, resumes Aug. 26.
The story of the truck and its cover-up also offers a glimpse of how a small-town policeman was caught up in the mad schemes of killing and deception in the Balkan conflict.
It is all the more unusual because until now, most Serbs who have appeared as witnesses or accused have discounted or denied their responsibility. Mr. Radojkovic, 46, who is still on active duty, is not charged with any crime.
The detective, a short, graying figure, spoke with precision. On the morning of April 5, 1999, a fisherman alerted the police at Kladovo that the tip of a white truck was visible in the Danube. Mr. Radojkovic went to the scene.
He sent in a diver, who reported that the freezer truck was from a Kosovo meat packing plant. Its front window was missing, its cabin empty. But one of the back doors, although closed with a chain, was slightly open, and some human limbs were sticking out.
The police borrowed a crane from a nearby power plant. It took several hours to pull up the heavy truck. As it rose onto the riverbank, Mr. Radojkovic saw "two human legs and an arm" protruding from the back. He took pictures, as he always did at a crime scene. Then he "pushed the limbs back inside and closed the door with nuts and bolts," because the scene was "disturbing" for the crane workers and the watching villagers.
Next, "we informed an investigating judge, the coroner and the public prosecutor," Mr. Radojkovic said. Once they arrived, he said, he broke the padlock and opened the back doors of the truck. "I saw a heap of corpses," he said.
"How many?" the investigating judge asked.
"I said there were a lot," he said he replied.
The judge backed away. He said such a big case was not within his jurisdiction.
As a result, Mr. Radojkovic and a colleague sent a message to the district police at Bor, and the cover-up began. Orders came to remove the names lettered on the cabin doors, which included Prizren, a town in Kosovo. In the dark, Mr. Radojkovic said, he spray-painted over the words.
The truck had no license plates. Mr. Radojkovic brought some from the police station, damaged them and smeared them with mud to make them look used and affixed them to the truck. He patched the hole in the back door. At each stage he took photographs, which were projected in the courtroom.
Asked why he disguised the truck, the detective replied that the Romanian border was less than a mile away and Romania supported NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia because of the Kosovo situation. There were Romanian patrol boats on the Danube. "They could think all sorts of things," the detective said.
The next day, the district police chief arrived and took over. "He told me to take no further photographs," Mr. Radojkovic said. The truck was to be treated as a state secret and the bodies were to be removed.
At night four civilians and a dozen policemen began the horrendous task. "I was inside the truck, with a colleague, taking out corpses," Mr. Radojkovic said.
Other men wrapped them. In the faint light they saw that the dead were adults, except for two children, all in civilian clothes.
"How long had the people been dead?" asked Dirk Ryneveld, the prosecutor.
"On the basis of my experience I think two or three days," the detective said. "The water was cold. The weather was cold."
Most bodies had visible wounds, inflicted with something blunt or something with a sharp edge, he said. One young man had a bullet wound in his chest and his hands tied behind his back.
At 3 a.m. the men stopped. "Everyone was exhausted," the detective continued. A truck took away the first 30 bodies. The next night, they pulled out the rest. They counted 83 bodies plus the heads and some body parts of three more victims.
The next day, on April 8, the district chief ordered the freezer truck to be towed away and burned. Mr. Radojkovic said he and a colleague had poured gasoline over the vehicle and set it on fire. But its metal structure remained. After checking with the police chief, he blew it up. "We used industrial explosives," the detective said.
For his final question, the prosecutor asked, "How do you feel about the way you were instructed to carry out your investigation?"
"As for my feelings, I had none at the time," the detective replied. "There was a war going on. I did what had to be done." Once the job was finished, he said, he had to check into hospital, overwrought.
Some of the bodies from the truck are believed to be among the bodies found in a secret grave at a police training camp in a Belgrade suburb. More than 1,000 bodies of Kosovo residents have been found in Serbian mass graves, and many people are still missing.
Mr. Milosevic, almost friendly, cross-examined the detective for close to two hours but was unable to dent his story. Supporters of Mr. Milosevic have said Belgrade fabricated the truck story to speed up the former president's surrender to the tribunal.
What did the witness know about the identity of the dead? "In a few cases we looked into their pockets," Mr. Radojkovic replied, and he went on: "The little girl who was 7 or 8 had a small backpack." They found a Unicef notebook and crayons. "In the notebook was only a drawing of a little house and a flower. Nothing else."
"All right," replied Mr. Milosevic, putting away his list of questions. "Enough about this phantom freezer truck."
Are you an idiot?
It still appears to me that the victims here ran afoul of KLA press gangs. But, until we see the full forensic report, one can not be certain
The whoppers just keep coming and coming don't they.....
1) First as KLA Commander Remi's PR guy admitted twice (once on BBC interview, second in Newspaper interview), just in one area of Kosovo (the Llap ZO) the KLA expelled 220,000 Albanian civilians during Clinton's bombing Remi and his entire crew have been arrested for murdering Albanian women and children.
2) Your statment is contradicted by numerous US & English reporters on the ground. Watson of the LA Times and Jacky Rowland of the BBC both reported interviewing civilains and being told their were no expulsions.
3) Finally, the '800,000' implies that somehow civilians will simply stay put when there are 1,000's of war planes flying overhead and a huge NATO ground invasion is being talked about. Clinton's bombers hit enough civilians targets for the locals to be darned scared. It is boggles the mind that one could believe Clinton's lie that people stay put when they are being cluster bombed.
You are welcome, Mr. Andy-From-the-Tribe-That-Never-Slanders-Slavs.
So what the Kosova means in your language? The meaning of Kosovo is clear to every Slav, but Kosova is a mystery, please explain.
I checked and I did not find it. So are you making this up or do you have the links?
You accuse duckln of that when you believe that the victims of Nato's unwarranted attack, which was nothing less than state terrorism, can be overlooked because they 'didn't mean to kill them'? (So they didn't know that trains carry people, hospitals hold patients, or houses house people??) Come on! People are still dying today as a result of what Nato did. Perhaps you also follow the standard cry that 'we are morally right'.
By the way, it shows a distinct lack of understanding to believe that everyone against what Nato did or against the ICTY is a Milosevic supporter. Nato has put Serbia on trial, which was their mistake. That is why they have tried to introduce such things as a Prosecution-prepared report on the Serbian national consciousness into 'evidence'. This is xenophobic nonsense.
In the same way that you ask about the Serbian 'persecution complex', what about the British and US superiority complex?! What about, say, Scottish or French nationalism, which is rife. It's been open season on Serbia for the past 10 years and only the most naive would accept the BBC/ CNN/ govt version of events.
Hope he stays safe.
Field of BlackBirds...
I am impressed that your time is so valuable comparing to mine. If you had real sources you would be able to point to them without very hard looking.
Oh yes, those evil American pilots specifically targeted trains, hospitals and houses. What are you smoking? There's a big difference between bombs going astray, and lining up civilians against a brick wall and shooting them.
Perhaps you also follow the standard cry that 'we are morally right'.
Morally, we were right. Perhaps more importantly, we did the right thing from a political point of view.
Nato has put Serbia on trial, which was their mistake.
Nato doesn't have anything to do with the War Crimes Tribunal. The prosecutors have made some significant blunders, granted, but I think the only thing fueling the idea that Serbia is on trial is Serbs' own irrational persecution complex. There is no vast anti-slavic conspiracy, I assure you.
what about the British and US superiority complex?!
Well, I hate to break it to you, but we are superior.
What about, say, Scottish or French nationalism, which is rife.
When the Scotts and French start shooting ethnic minorities, maybe I'll start paying attention to them.
It's been open season on Serbia for the past 10 years and only the most naive would accept the BBC/ CNN/ govt version of events.
To some extent, you're right. In my opinion, the German government deliberately precipitated the Bosnian war by encouraging Tudjman to stage a violent and unnecessarily unpleasant secession. But to say that there's been some sort of conspiracy against the Serbs is complete nonsense. Serbs lost the Battle of Kosova 613 years ago -- get over it.
I'm referring to an autonomous majority-Muslim province in southern Serbia, but then you knew that.
You are welcome, Mr. Andy-From-the-Tribe-That-Never-Slanders-Slavs.
The vast anti-Slavic conspiracy strikes again.
(par´´ah-noi´ah) 1. in current usage, a descriptive term limited to the characterization of behavior that is marked by well-systematized delusions of persecution, delusions of grandeur, or a combination of the two. adj., paranoi´ac or par´anoid. There are several disorders in which paranoia may occur; see "delusional disorder" DELUSIONAL DISORDER, "shared psychotic disorder" SHARED PSYCHOTIC DISORDER, "paranoid personality, paranoid personality disorder" PARANOID PERSONALITY, PARANOID PERSONALITY DISORDER, and "schizophrenia" SCHIZOPHRENIA (paranoid type). 2. former name for what is now called "delusional disorder" DELUSIONAL DISORDER.
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