Bosnia: Tidying up After Bungled Police Raid The police officer in charge of a disastrous attempt to catch a war crimes suspect has been removed, in what many believe is a damage-limitation exercise to protect his superiors.
By Gordana Katana in Banja Luka and Nerma Jelacic in Sarajevo (BCR No 499, 25-May-04) The botched raid by police in Republika Srpska in which an innocent man was killed claimed new victims last week when the authorities removed a police commander in an apparent attempt to wash their hands of the affair. Republica Srpska, RS, interior minister Zoran Djeric and the entity's director of police Radomir Njegus removed the commander of the Special Police force, Dragan Lukac, blaming him for the failed raid since it was his men who carried it out. The way the authorities tell it, Lukac is being held accountable for mishandling a mission to serve an arrest warrant on Milan Lukic, one of the most notorious war crimes suspects still on the loose. Lukic was not at his parents' house in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad when police burst in at dawn on April 18, opening fire and leaving his brother Novica dead. The official purpose of the raid was to detain Milan Lukic and his cousin Sredoje, both indicted by the Hague tribunal for war crimes committed against non-Serbs in Visegrad in 1992. Despite its failure, the operation was welcomed by the High Representative Lord Paddy Ashdown as "the most serious attempt yet by the RS authorities to detain those indicted by the ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia], in accordance with Bosnia and Herzegovina's international obligations". However, many believe the police raid was designed not to deliver Milan Lukic to the Hague war crimes tribunal, but specifically to kill him because - as IWPR reported this month - he had been passing information to the Hague about former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, who is top on the tribunal's wanted list. Lukic would be in a good position to provide intelligence because he is believed to have been a member of the network that supported Karadzic, but he subsequently fell out with him. A TRAGIC ERROR? If the police swoop was designed to arrest the suspect and deliver him to The Hague, then they clearly failed to coordinate with the tribunal. A source in the RS police told IWPR that on the day the raid was mounted, Lukic was preparing to hand over some incriminating documents to a representative of the Hague tribunal, detailing the involvement of leading figures in RS interior ministry in organised crime and in protecting Karadzic. In that light, the removal of Lukac looks more and more like a cover-up. These suspicions are increased by news that not all those directly involved in the raid have been punished. While Lukac and his deputy Dragan Ribic have been removed from post, and the two men accused of shooting Novica Lukic are under arrest, another officer who took part in the raid, Ranko Vukacic, has been promoted, taking over Lukac's position. Six regular police units serving under the Public Security Centre in eastern RS were also involved in the raid, but no member has been suspended. Whatever the intent was, arrest or extrajudicial execution, the raid failed miserably. It was doomed from the start - the intelligence that Milan Lukic would be at the Visegrad home of his parents was wrong. The raid conducted on the right day - when Lukic was due to meet a Hague agent - but according to IWPR's police source, the intelligence got the town wrong - Milan was in fact across the border in the small Montenegrin town of Pluzine. The team of Special Police members that burst into the Lukic family home was clearly prepared for forceful action. Lukac subsequently told the Nezavisne Novosti newspaper that, "We were ordered by the District Court [of Srpsko Sarajevo] to search the house of Mile Lukic, father of Milan Lukic, and arrest Milan or Sredoje Lukic if we find them. The information we possessed on Milan Lukic indicated that a surprise operation was needed if it was to be successful, as he was very dangerous and likely to put up resistance." But eyewitness accounts suggest that no attempt was made to check the identities or make arrests. Police simply broke down the door and shot Novica dead. That tends to support suggestions that the raid was in fact a rogue operation to stop Lukic delivering vital information about the Karadzic network. The Lukic brothers' parents certainly believe this to be the case. They also believe their elder son had damaging knowledge about the police. "They wanted to kill our son [Novica] because he knew about criminal activities in the RS interior ministry," said Mile Lukic, father of the Lukic brothers. "They [Special Police] were just carrying out orders. I am sure there are people who ordered them to do this." MEN WHO FIRED THE SHOTS "SCAPEGOATS" Senior politicians in the Bosnian Serb entity - who are under pressure from the Office of the High Representative, OHR, to cooperate with the Hague tribunal - expressed public fury at the way the police action turned out. A day after the raid, Republika Srpska President Dragan Cavic ordered an investigation, saying "The RS interior ministry has a legal obligation to carry out operations to apprehend indicted war criminals, but they must exercise caution to safeguard the lives of all concerned. If use of excessive force is proven, those responsible will face charges." Interior minister Djeric then commissioned police chief Njegus to carry out an investigation, and the two members of special police who reportedly shot Novica were arrested. On May 19, after almost a month in detention in the RS prison at Kula, the two - Vedran Purisic and Drazen Bojic, both in their twenties - demanded through their lawyer that their names be made public, saying that they were being made scapegoats for following their orders. "The police had orders to shoot at anything that moved, and my clients followed those orders. Now they are being blamed for carrying out their duty," the lawyer, Dusko Tomic, said in a press statement Tomic said his clients accepted full responsibility for the killing of Novica, which they said was not premeditated, and that they had written to the Lukic family saying so. Purisic and Bojic have said repeatedly that they felt unsafe in Kula and asked to be transferred to holding cells of SFOR, the international force in Bosnia. MORE HEADS ROLL Almost a month after the event and before the internal inquiry had been completed, RS police director Njegus said that Lukac and his deputy Ribic were the individuals "most responsible" for the raid's failure. As well as the two men arrested, eight other lower-ranking members of the Special Police were suspended. This minor purge did not come as much surprise. A number of people close to the internal inquiry had told IWPR that the authorities were likely to seek to shift blame to the lowest possible level. The interior ministry produced an interim report identifying the Special Police commander as the principal culprit in the command chain, and setting out the reasons why he and Ribic should be removed. The report - which IWPR has seen - was reviewed by the RS parliament, and then approved on May 19. Lukac initially refused to step down, but on May 20 he agreed to go. He and Ribic have since been assigned much less prestigious positions as inspectors within the regular police force in RS. Lukac has strongly denied that he mishandled the raid or that he acted - or could have acted - above and beyond the arrest orders he received from his superiors. Together with a number of analysts and politicians who have seen the interior ministry report, Lukac disputes the arguments set forth in it. The document blames the Special Forces commander for not making a detailed operational plan of action and failing to provide the mission with a detailed plans of the Lukic home. At a May 17 press conference - responding to the police report then being submitted to parliament - Lukac said that he followed orders given by his superiors, that is of Njegus and the interior minister Djeric. Lukac said he did ask Njegus to issue written orders, so that he in turn could produce written instructions for the Special Police team, but his superior refused to do so, giving him only verbal orders. An operational plan was produced three days after the action and he was asked to sign it retrospectively. "The operational plan of action was made after April 20, but dated April 17. That was done on the orders of director Njegus," said Lukac. "It also has my signature on it, because the director [Njegus] asked me to do that. " A former member of the RS Special Police force confirmed to IWPR that under police regulations, Lukac would not have been allowed to produce an operational plan without written orders from above. "They cannot write an operational plan if there is no basic plan. The Special Police force cannot take action on its own initiative. Only the interior minister and the director of police can order the force to engage. The plan has to be made by the top [interior ministry leadership] and then given to the Special Police to carry out. "In this particular case, everything came down to a verbal agreement, and the action was covered by a plan only afterwards." A second allegation contained in Njegus's report is that it was not ascertained whether "the person whose arrest was planned" was inside the house. "Similarly, there was no recent photograph of individuals who were targets of the action," said the report. Another former Special Police officer, Marko Pavic - who is now head of the Democratic National Alliance, dismisses this claim, saying that it goes against operational rules. "Interior ministry protocol says that these [intelligence-gathering functions] are not the responsibilities of the Special Police. This is the responsibility of other services, which should forward such information to the Special Police, which will then take action on that basis." "This shows that here we have a case of trying to pass the blame to the lowest possible level, which will most certainly have an effect on future actions this unit may have to carry out," he warned. Finally, the police report blames Lukac for not being present during the raid. Bad weather in Banja Luka prevented him from travelling to Visegrad that morning, and in the report Njegus said he should have made alternative arrangements. But the journey by road would have taken six hours, far too long for the commander to have arrived in time for the raid. At his press conference, Lukac said the reason he had not gone to Visegrad with his forces the previous evening was that Njegus had specifically asked him to go by helicopter the next morning. IWPR tried to question the RS police chief about the apparent discrepancies in the document. Interior ministry spokesman Zoran Glusac responded that Njegus had already said everything he had to say when the document was discussed in the assembly. SENIOR OFFICIALS WALK AWAY FROM DISASTER Some of the politicians and analysts interviewed by IWPR fear that the Visegrad raid is being swept under the carpet, and that those higher up the command chain will escape unscathed. "If we are to identify those guilty of the failure of the Visegrad operation, then some responsibility must lie at the top of the interior ministry, primarily with Djeric and Njegus," Tanja Topic, a political analyst with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German foundation, told IWPR. "Lukac's removal is a political decision and the policemen are the losers in this story." Milorad Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, shares this view, "The Special Police acts only under orders and plans given to them by the director of police and senior interior ministry operatives. It is irresponsible that those who gave those orders are now washing their hands of any accountability." But there is little hope that politicians will take on some responsibility. "To expect any of the politicians to resign because of this would be hopeless because the experiences we have had so far show that for these politicians accountability is a foreign term," Topic concluded. SPECIAL POLICE CHIEF WAS A MARKED MAN Political analysts suggest that commander Lukac made a convenient scapegoat because he was unpopular with his superiors and regarded as a thorn in the side by the nationalist Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, which came back to power in 2002. At his press conference in Banja Luka, Lukac said he had been under pressure from the authorities because of his decision back in 1997 to support former RS president Biljana Plavsic in a confrontation with hardline politicians. At that time, the nationalists tried to bring down Plavsic because of her decision to crack down on elements in the government who were giving support to Karadzic. The hardliners, based in Pale and led by indicted war criminal Momcilo Krajisnik, had the support of the interior minister Dragan Kijac, who was later sacked by the then High Representative. Lukac refused to obey orders from Kijac to go to Pale, choosing instead to remain in Banja Luka and stand by Plavsic. "Many in the SDS never forgave me or my people for 1997," Lukac said on May 19. Some believe the fall-out from the Visegrad raid has been exploited to pressure Lukac to resign. "One gets the impression [that there were] attempts to compromise Lukac at any cost; that is, to get him to make a mistake which would result in his removal," said Topic. Njegus's choice of replacement certainly suggests a political shift. The new commander of the Special Police, Ranko Vukovic, was an police inspector who - unlike Lukac -switched sides and join the hard-liners in Pale in 1997. "This case is explicitly politicised," warned Milorad Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats. "What worries me even more than Lukac's removal is the fact that the special police force is going to be led by the people who in 1997 supported organised crime groups in the RS." LONGER TERM SETBACK FOR BOSNIAN SERB LEADERS Even if RS officials succeed in distancing themselves from the bungled raid, they may yet suffer the consequences. The RS leadership remains under pressure to deliver war crimes indictees, including Karadzic. The Office of the High Representative issued a statement on May 20 warning that, "OHR expects Republika Srpska police, and in particular Njegus and Djeric, to implement and intensify activities to arrest war crime suspects. If they fail in doing so before the NATO summit in Istanbul, then they will be among those most culpable for the failure of Bosnia and Herzegovina to join Partnership for Peace [NATO programme]." Lukac believes that the tactic of allowing the Special Police to take all the blame will greatly complicate any future operation to arrest war crimes indictees. "The RS must carry out its duties towards the Hague War Crimes Tribunal and everyone is banging on about it,"said Lukac at his press conference. "I don't know who they think they will send to carry out these duties for them now. It's a message that no one should let themself [be drawn] into such actions." Gordana Katana is a regular IWPR contributor. Nerma Jelacic is IWPR project manager in Bosnia and Herzegovina. http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr3/bcr3_200405_499_4_eng.txt <http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr3/bcr3_200405_499_4_eng.txt> Srpska Informativna Mreza [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
