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."
Source? Frankly, I find it hard to believe that the KLA would forcibly expel their own people, burn their houses down, rape and murder their women, etc. Second, even assuming for one second that your figure of 220,000 is correct (which I don't), what about the other 600,000 Albanian refugees? They just came along for the ride?
Your statment is contradicted by numerous US & English reporters on the ground.
Wait a second. I was just told I couldn't cite any media sources. Ok, so now everything's game?
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.
Your dishonest apology for Milosevic's butchers has reached epic proportions. While it is true that most of the refugees only reached safety after the bombing started, almost without exception they had left their homes days before any civilians were killed by NATO bombs. Now are you going to say that they were only ancipitating civilian casualties, should a wider war begin? Right...
Well, yes. Some speculate they left because Serbs burned down their homes and forced them to leave at gunpoint, while others insist they simply signed up for a walking tour of the Southern Balkans.
What is not open to debate is that the US began bombing Yugoslavia BEFORE those 800,000 left.
Simply not true. The US began bombing before those 800,000 arrived in Albania and Macedonia, but most had already left their villages by the time it started.
You win the prize for most substantive comment of the week.
Dear Andy, 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field has nothing to do with it. Serbs lost battle against the Ottoman Empire, not with Albanians. (Then, some Albanians fought alongside Serbs.) Serbs regained Kosovo back and finally expelled the Turks in 1912. It took a while, but it was done. And it will be done again, 500 years from now, if needed.
The problem with Kosovo Albanian squatters and carpetbaggers has nothing to do with 1389. It has to do with joint effort of Nazis (Germany), Fascist (Italy) and post-WWII Communists (Tito and Xoxha) to expell Kosovo Serbs and let squatters from Albania inhabit Kosovo.
Of course, like everything else, joint Nazi/Fascist/Communist project failed. It took liberal-led United States to join in and finish the project.
of course, you have heard the expression "the grave of the empires". Future historians will mark Kosovo blunder as the milestone of demise of United States as we know it today. (since history is not your strong side, Medieval Serbia lingered on more than 60 years after Kosovo defeat. Give the States about the same)
Serbian patriots can say with sadness to American patriots: now you have Kosovo defeat of your own. Defeat of all the values that made America great for 200 years.
if you hear some humming noise, that's American forefathers spinning in their graves.
Not so vast. Fortunately there are not so many of you, Mr. Kosova.
Yugoslavia, (not Serbia) was in fact following a milder policy than Turkey has been in confronting herKurdish rebels (want to compare the death-tolls and emptied villages?).
The guilt as an American is ours and mine even if it is indirect through my tax dolsars funding a bit of that war and current occupation as well as disgusted that we allied ourselves with al-Qaeda West to pull Kosovo off.
Forgive me for wanting some of my fellow American's heads to roll for it.
PS: I did not know I had become the residential FR info-man.
This was published on December 3, 2000. You can find the entire article reprinted here. Unfortunately, the Times’ site doesn’t permit an archive search back that far.
AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians.
Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.
When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before air strikes began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander.
European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made air strikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission.
"The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE," said a European envoy.
The next is from March 18, 2001. It’s an excerpt; I don’t have the full article in my archives, but the relevant reference for our purposes is in the second paragraph. The original URL is: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/03/18/stifgneeu02001.html. However, that link now just takes you to the Times’ main page.
"Embarrassingly for Kfor, it emerged that two of the Kosovo-based commanders leading the Albanian push were trained by former British SAS and Parachute Regiment officers in the days when Nato was more comfortable with the fledgling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
"A former member of a European special forces unit who accompanied the KLA during the Kosovo conflict said that a commander with the nom de guerre of Bilal was organising the flow of arms and men into Macedonia, and that the veteran KLA commander Adem Bajrami was helping to co-ordinate the assault on Tetovo. Both were taught by British soldiers in the secretive training camps that operated above Bajram Curri in northern Albania during 1998 and 1999.
'"The final irony of this is that Nato will be facing not only its own weapons but also its own tactics,' said the special forces soldier. 'And Nato simply can't handle a guerrilla war - the Albanians will beat them.'
'"Even backed by howitzers placed in the football stadium by the Macedonian army, the special police were no match for the rebel group, said to number no more than 300 yesterday, and found themselves pinned down by shooting from Kale and from three subordinate positions in a bewildering combination of crossfire.
As for your other comments, I underestimated you re the Afghan incident. Both you and I know, though, that any alleged crimes he committed will never be adjudicated in a US-backed tribunal. Concerning the Serbs’ persecution complex, the cause is precisely the neighbors in the Balkans, though the Germans and Austrians have a pretty sorry record there too. If the Serbs feel persecuted, perhaps there is justification – after all, their neighbors did try to exterminate them in the 1941-45 period. Looking strictly at Kosovo, my read is that the KLA’s goal was the eradication of Serbs (and other non-Albanians) and their culture there. The Serbs, having been on the receiving end of earlier Albanian attempts to do just that, fought back as if their continued existence in Kosovo depended on it. They were right. The advent of KLA rule under NATO/KFOR has extinguished Serb people and culture in Kosovo except in a few small and probably untenable pockets – a true genocide. I can’t blame the Serbs (I’m not one, BTW) for fighting the way they did, because the stakes for them were so high.
I'm not sure what you mean, since there is no "NATO Charter." I am familiar with the North Atlantic Treaty, and would be interested to learn how the action in Kosovo violates any tenet of that treaty.
international law as codified by the UN,
Sorry, that bird doesn't fly. Serbia and Montenegro commenced the war. Nato ended it.
and Clinton violated the constitution of the USA by continuing an air war whose authorization congress voted against.
Clinton would have violated the constitution if Congress had voted to withhold funding for the operation. But unless you've got a different copy of the Congressional Record than I'm looking through, they didn't do that.
Yugoslavia, (not Serbia) was in fact following a milder policy than Turkey has been in confronting herKurdish rebels (want to compare the death-tolls and emptied villages?).
Again, you show complete ignorance of international relations. Yes, in a perfect world, we'd come down hard on Turkey's horrendous human rights abuses. But we can't do that because they are a Nato member and a vital strategic partner in the Middle East. Serbia and Montenegro aren't, which I suppose is too bad for them.
we allied ourselves with al-Qaeda West
How many American skyscrapers has the KLA destroyed? Exactly. So much for your attempt at moral equivalency.
PS: I did not know I had become the residential FR info-man.
Don't worry, you're not.
From what I read, words like 'help' and 'assist' don't have the same meaning to organizations like the KLA that they have to ordinary people. Helping and assisting others to me generally means carrying things which are too heavy for them, giving somebody a ride somewhere, jump starting cars for people, teaching people to hit inside-out backhands in tennis, and stuff like that.
Like I say, that doesn't seem to be what 'help' or 'assist' means to the KLA. How were the western nations you mention "assisting" the KLA? Were they assisting them in procuring women for the white slave markets of Europe? Were they helping them operate the European heroin trade? Were they helping them move stolen cars from Europe to Russia and the levant? Were they helping them poison wells and do their little rape, pillage, and drive others out of regions they'd lived in for centuries thing? Were they helping them blow up government buildings and kill Yugoslav government workers?
Dear Andy,
KLA was given the latest U.S. communication equipment and know-how to use it and conceal themselves from tracking by YU forces. Elite commando unit of KLA was trained by Zawahiri's brother. It does not take PhD in rocket science to figure out how Al Qaida got the latest communication equipment and expertise, along with inside knowledge how U.S. services communicate.
How many skyscrapers KLA destroyed? None. But how many they helped destroy? 6 too many (plus that ugly pentagon scratch)
Those who gave comm equipment to KLA should be court marshalled. Dear Andy, you are sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand of obfuscations. I can foresee you will fade away from FR pretty soon.
< /sarcasm>
I'm not surprised. If I were a member of an underdog guerilla movement, I'd take help from anybody willing to give it. The KLA are nuts, but they're not Islamic fundies.
It does not take PhD in rocket science to figure out how Al Qaida got the latest communication equipment and expertise, along with inside knowledge how U.S. services communicate.
You forgot to mention any evidence you might have to support that claim. In case you forgot, US forces recently conquered Afghanistan. Where was all this sophisticated equipment you say they had? How have they hidden it from the thousands of our troops who've spent the last year scouring every inch of the country? And how, exactly, have they used their supposed expertise against us? You really haven't thought this through, have you?
How many skyscrapers KLA destroyed? None. But how many they helped destroy? 6 too many (plus that ugly pentagon scratch)
Um, some supporting evidence would be nice.
Perhaps you might share some stories from 1998 visit to Albania. As non-government employee, of course :-). Like, how the labor division between BND, KSK, ShiK and American services worked on ground. Who was overseeing Bin Laden network in Albania, who was responsible for it's activities.
As of material evidence, I believe some people are not sleeping very well. The truth is out there, it will take time for facts to surface.
I figured you either were extremely ignorant or you were trying to draw some angry fire from the people that believe that the Serbs were dealt some terrible hands during the divorcings of Yugoslavia. Then I realised that if either of these theories were true, you were not someone whose views and posts are worth the time or effort of a response.
While others may take satisfaction in dismantling your shallow and ill thought out positions for their own entertainment, I'll save my responses for those of a higher calibur of sincerity and extended thought. Now I conclude my last response to you with the period at the end of this sentence.
Well, if pragmatic neoconservative atheists are going to start breeding like rabbits, I think my wife would constitute an interested party.
I couldn't tell you. As I told you before, I wasn't involved with anything having to do with Kosovo. I was hired to work on the Albanian Constitution and to get it passed in a referendum. When the referndum passed, I left. I'm not sure why you think I'm a double super secret agent.
As of material evidence, I believe some people are not sleeping very well. The truth is out there, it will take time for facts to surface.
Well, when the mountains of evidence surface, give me a ping. Until then, its just baseless and libelous conjecture.
As a twat, I'll have you know that both the US and the UK are great powers. Serbia and Montenegro aren't. If that fact offends you, I'm not sure what I can say.
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