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The shameful terror against my family is part of the criminal
lawlessness and tyranny, through which the Belgrade regime is aiding The Hague
and its aggression against our country and our people - Slobodan Milosevic’s public response to charges fabricated by the Belgrade regime -
In March 2001, I
was accused of imaginary crimes, so I could be arrested and delivered to The
Hague. These new
accusations in 2003 have the same purpose: The Hague. Only this time, their goal
is to try to prevent, or at least minimize, the obvious fiasco of the false
Tribunal, which is serving as the weapon of war against our country and our
people. This time, unlike 2001, they have also begun to terrorize my family,
fiendishly persecuting my wife and my son. The criminal campaign against my wife
and my son is being mounted solely because of my struggle here.
It is absurd
and shameful that they are hounding a woman, a spouse of a long-time head of
state, a University professor; the author of ten books, translated into 30
languages and printed worldwide, so no one will be able to destroy or cover up
her weekly testimonies on the Yugoslav crisis. Their worth has been time-tested
and proven, to Mira’s honor and our pride. No other intellectual has raised her
voice more against war, violence, primitivism, exploitation, and slavery and in
favor of peace, freedom and equal rights. They are
hounding a young man who with an open and clear heart decided to make his way in
life independently, through his own labor, intelligence and abilities, and has
done everything to help others and make his town more beautiful and more humane.
A crime is
being committed against two people who have treated others with nothing but
goodness and humanity. Their only
crime is being my family. People of
Serbia and freedom-loving people throughout the world send me messages of
support and wish me victory. It seems that only the Belgrade regime cheers on
the Hague Tribunal, so much so that it does not balk from terrorizing women and
children. I have told
the two men who came to interrogate me – five months after I publicly requested
it – that only cowards attack women and children, that there is no greater
shame. The political, media and police
campaign against me and my family is the greatest infamy for any country; an
infamy that will grow greater for its participants, but also those who witness
it in silence, with time. Legija and
the Red Berets Regarding
the “reasons” for which the judge and the prosecutor came to The Hague, I wish
to make it clear that: Neither I
nor my entourage ever had any connections with any criminal groups.
No “Zemun
Clan“ existed while I was President. It is the direct result of the current
governments’ behavior, the role certain groups and individuals had in the
October 5, 2000 coup, and their mutual arrangements.
Neither
I nor any of my entourage had personal contacts or acquaintances with members of
the Special Operations Unit, popularly known as the Red Berets. I believed it
was an elite anti-terrorist unit, common to any Security Service. I still
believe that most of that unit’s members were true to this description. Those
who had a criminal past or inclination thereto are certainly better known to the
present regime, as they used them on October 5. My
visit to the Kula facility in 1997 was ceremonial, a gesture of appreciation for
the Service chief Jovica Stanisic, whom I respected as a professional and a man
who endeavored to do his job in accordance with his position. That the visit was
ceremonial, and that everything there was new to me, should be obvious to anyone
who reviews the entire tape and pays attention.
The
officer who reported to me on the parade grounds was unfamiliar to me. Now I
know his name was Lukovic, “Legija.” When he came to arrest me in March 2001, I
mistook him for the officer who during my visit drove Stanisic and me from the
headquarters to the outdoors gymnasium, which they also wanted to show me. By
the way, even today I cannot recall any of the names of officers who reported to
me on various occasions before an honor guard. This goes even for the commanders
of Yugoslav Army Guard units. The
first time I talked to Lukovic-Legija was when he came to arrest me, on March
31, 2001. Given that I had never been in any contact with him before, or even
conversed with him, the only thing I could have “ordered” him would have been my
arrest.
Clearly, those who used the “Red Berets” members for my arrest (and others, who
jumped over the fence into the residence with stockings on their heads) have
also used them before and after. I clearly could not.
Rumors that
this unit also worked as my security detail are not true. Plain lies. My
security detail at all time was the public security unit (not State Security),
commanded by Senta Milenkovic. Ivan
Stambolic I have
been a friend of Ivan Stambolic for many years. We parted ways at the
8th Session of the Serbian League of Communists’ Central Committee,
in 1987. We never quarreled personally. After
he was relieved, he came to me and asked for one of the best jobs (in both our
opinion) in the SFRY: President of the Yugoslav bank for international economic
relations. And he received it, staying in that position for over 10 years
despite the practice of rotating the management, until his retirement – for
which he was eligible long before, on grounds of both work experience and
age. He had been
completely forgotten as a politician for many years. Thus the story of how he
represented a potential challenge in the elections is a blatant lie, since he
was never in the running. He was not even a candidate. Besides, in those ten
years, has any harm befallen any other candidates? It is absurd
to claim that I rushed to kill him as a threat, after I’d enabled him to hold a
position of his choice for 10 years and he retired!
Especially
puzzling for me is that his family has readily accepted this shallow lie. It
seems they care more to blame me than find out the truth about the fate of their
father and husband. Ivan
Stambolic was a forgotten politician, and at the time of his disappearance, a
forgotten banker as well. No one in the state or the political apparatus had
mentioned him for years. He belonged to the era of the former SFRY, and things
have unfortunately changed since 1990. No offense,
but no one cared about Ivan Stambolic any more. There was no persecution of
those who supported his position at the 8th Session. Desimir Jeftić,
the chairman of the Serbian government who was also relieved, was for many years
the Ambassador to Romania. Ivan’s best friend and neighbor Dragan Tomic, the CEO
of ”Simpo” furniture company, remained a member of the Party and state
leadership. I am certain he would confirm that I had told him, after Ivan was
relieved, that I would think of him the worst if he’d renounced his friend and
turned his back on him. So, the truth is quite the opposite from the story
fabricated by several pathetic creatures. I was
informed of Ivan’s disappearance over the telephone, by interior minister Vlajko
Stojiljkovic. I told him to use all the available resources to find him. He told
me that Ivan’s wife and son reported his disappearance in the afternoon, though
he went jogging that morning, which would make the investigation more
difficult. All border
posts were notified, and Vlajko Stojiljkovic told me later that evening that
several hundred police were engaged in the investigation. I insisted that all
resources be used to find him [Stambolic] as soon as possible. Certainly most of
these officers are still employed by the interior ministry, and can testify to
that. From what
Stojiljkovic told me, everything that could have been done was done.
Draskovic,
Pavkovic and the Budva Incident Since the
investigator, during the introductions, mentioned my alleged connection to the
“attempted murder of Vuk Draskovic”, I wish to say a few words about that as
well. I never
believed that what happened in Budva was a real murder attempt, because it seems
improbable that someone could shoot up all the bullets in a small room like that
and miss with every one of them. Even Vuk Draskovic, with his talent for the
dramatic, could not have turned into a fly or a mosquito. I believed that either
someone tried to scare him, or that he made the entire incident up to gain
attention and promote his role as the “victim of the regime.” It is not hard to
see who could have benefited from such an incident, but it is abundantly clear
that it did not serve the government. Quite to the contrary, in fact. I am not
aware that the Serbian Security Service had any activities in Montenegro apart
from gathering information about cigarette smuggling into Serbia. Rade Markovic
even showed me aerial reconnaissance photos of an area known as Mehov Krs, on
the Serbian side of the boundary with Montenegro, and explained that according
to his information, that was a major warehouse for smuggled cigarettes. He was
preparing a raid to catch the smugglers and seize the contraband, when the
timing was right. I do not know whether the photos were made from an airplane or
a helicopter, police or military, as these details did not interest me.
I never
talked to Pavkovic about transporting “assassins” and “agents” from Montenegro.
It is incredulous that the Commander in Chief would be involved in shuttling
some alleged secret agents, especially through the entire chain of command
starting at the Chief of the General Staff. Truth is,
I’ve always insisted that services should cooperate and abandon their rivalry, as they
did not serve me but the state, and they were supposed to work for the state, in
accordance with the law. General Aleksandar Vasiljevic testified about that in
this illegal court, as a witness of the prosecution, no less. And Rade Markovic
testified both here and in front of two parliamentary committees that he was
illegally coerced into trying to incriminate me. The only
helicopter incident I ever remember concerned a low-altitude flyover of one
helicopter over the White Palace (which was illegal), when a Yugoslav Army
officer in charge of White Palace security kept his calm and prevented it from
being tragically shot down. Later that day it turned out that the helicopter was
evacuating a seriously ill person from the [Bosnian] Serb Republic to the
Academy of Military Medicine [VMA]. Are you not
ashamed? I demanded
of both the investigator and the prosecutor that my interrogation be public, and
that they could even bring an open telephone line, so anyone could ask me
whatever they wanted. They explained that this was not allowed by law, as long
as the investigation was ongoing. I accepted that, but requested that the
recordings be made public at the end of the investigation – since there would be
no danger of potential interference at that time. They rejected that as well,
even though they had the full legal authority to approve it. Neither I, nor
they, nor my legal representatives disputed that. Today’s
government uses the law as an excuse for lawlessness and tyranny. Nothing
new! Montestquieu
wrote as early as 1742 that “There is no crueler tyranny than one perpetrated
under the shield of law, and in the name of justice.” In this
entire dirty operation of trying to save this illegitimate Hague court from a
fiasco, the most shameful element is surely the persecution of my wife and son.
I told the investigating judge that his investigation should include the phantom
gold bars, foreign currency reserves, villas in Switzerland and whatnot, because
they were all mentioned in various statements and extensive newspaper stories,
only to be “forgotten” later. I asked him
“Are you not ashamed?” He did not answer. To my
wife and son, Mira and Marko, who have been separated from me in this heinous
way, I wish to say: “Life is too short to thank you for your
goodness.” The Hague, 17 August 2003. Slobodan Milosevic
URL for this text: http://www.sloboda.org.yu/engleski/slobaE170803.htm
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