www.slobodan-milosevic.org – May 31, 2005
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Mr. Nice continued his cross-examination of Serbia’s former assistant interior minister, Gen. Obrad Stevanovic, at the ICTY trial of Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday.
Mr. Nice attempted to depict Serbia as an oppressive police state during the 1990s, and Gen. Stevanovic dismissed the prosecutor’s claims as untrue. Stevanovic testified that the population did not live in fear of the police, and anybody who has been to Serbia knows that he is telling the truth.
Mr. Nice claimed that Milosevic was in charge of the police, and Stevanovic dismissed that as absurd. Stevanovic had to repeatedly explain the obvious: that the police were subordinated to the Interior Minister, not to President Milosevic.
As Stevanovic explained in the first day of his testimony, the Interior Minister is elected by the parliament – not appointed by the President. Milosevic, as president, was in no position to control the police directly – that job falls to the Interior Minister just like it does in every other country.
Mr. Nice persisted in his claims that Serbia was a police state, he claimed that assassinations were “the order of the day.” Mr. Nice even went so far as to insinuate that Milosevic might have had something to do with the assassination of Zoran Djindjic.
Mr. Nice played the videotape from the JSO anniversary in Kula in 1997, the
prosecutor paused the tape on the place where Milorad Lukovic “Legija” (among
many others) could be seen shaking Milosevic’s hand. At that time Legija was the
JSO commander, and Milosevic briefly shook his hand as he was walking down a
line shaking everybody in the unit’s hand. The tape is really nothing special.
The tape was already dealt with when Captain Dragan testified, and the prosecution’s thesis that the tape showed a connection between Dragan’s Red Berets and the Serbian JSO fell apart way back then.
Mr. Nice was only trying to be theatrical since Legija is
the main suspect in the Djindjic assassination. Of course Legija is also the
policeman who arrested Milosevic, and Milosevic was already in jail in The Hague
when Djindjic was killed – but Mr. Nice mentioned none of that.
In a desperate attempt to advance his thesis that Milosevic ran a police state.
Mr. Nice made reference to an incident where the Serbian MUP took-over the
Federal SUP building in Belgrade. General Stevanovic commanded that particular
operation himself.
In October 1992, the Serbian MUP took over the entrances to the building pursuant to a ruling of the 2nd Municipal Court in Belgrade, which transferred ownership of the building from the Yugoslav Federation to the Republic of Serbia.
Stevanovic denied that force had been used, or that the
employees of the federal police were prohibited from entering their offices.
Stevanovic explained that the Serbian MUP set up a "new mechanism for the
control and admission" into the building. Some Federal SUP employees refused to
accept the new procedure and they were denied entry. All in all the incident was
a non-event, and it did not advance Mr. Nice’s case.
The cross-examination of General Stevanovic will continue
tomorrow. Mr. Nice is expected to take most of this week in cross-examination.
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