Just another scandal: Dead men walking! (Part 3)

In a major embarrassment for the Bosnian Government, two Muslim brothers whose supposed murders were used as evidence in a highly publicized war crimes trial to condemn two Bosnian Serbs to death have been found living in a Sarajevo suburb.

Mr. Damjanovic, 36, was found guilty, largely on a confession he later said was made under torture, of killing the two brothers and a third man, Krso Ramiz. But in yet another blow to the case, internal documents show that the Sarajevo public prosecutors office has charged three other Bosnian Serbs -- Nenad Damjanovic (not related to Sretko), Vukovic Miro and Jeftic Bozo -- with carrying out Mr. Ramiz's murder.

During the trial, Sretko Damjanovic recanted his confession and said he had been severely abused by the Muslim police until he signed the document. The court doctor confirmed at the trial that Mr. Damjanovic had four knife wounds and a broken rib that appeared to have been inflicted while in police custody.

In Mr. Damjanovic's confession, he stated that he was responsible for the killing of the two brothers, Kasim and Asim Blekic.

"The two principal pieces of evidence used to convict my client were his signed confession, where he supposedly admitted to murdering two men who we now know are alive, and the testimony of his co-defendant, Borislav Herak," said Mr. Damjanovic's lawyer, Branko Maric. "How can my client's supposed confession be considered valid now? And how can the testimony of Mr. Herak, who said he witnessed these alleged murders, also be accepted by the court?"...

Mr. Herak said in the trial that he saw Mr. Damjanovic kill Kasim and Asim Blekic as well as Mr. Ramiz. He said he also saw Mr. Damjanovic kill three other people who were not identified in the trial. No other witnesses were presented...

Kasim Blekic, who now raises sheep in a small shed next to his house in the Vogosca suburb, said he was unaware that his supposed killing had been used to indict Mr. Damjanovic until a year ago when Vogosca, which was under Bosnian Serb control, was handed back to the Muslim Government as part of the Dayton peace agreement.

Mr. Blekic, his wife and two children had fled their small home in Vogosca in May 1993 when they found themselves living along what became the front line.

His house was destroyed in the fighting. Mr. Blekic, 43, became an ambulance driver for the army during the war. He and his brother lived in Sarajevo until the fighting ended.

"I didn't return to Vogosca until last year when the Serbs were leaving," he said, standing next to a small, muddy pen that held about two dozen bleating sheep.

"I was buying cattle in those days from a lot of the Serbs, including many of my old neighbors. I went to see the uncle of Sretko Damjanovic, an old friend, and he said he couldn't believe I was alive. He told me his nephew had been sentenced to death for killing my brother and me. They all looked at me as if I was a ghost."

Mr. Blekic said he knew Mr. Damjanovic and his family. He described his relationship with the condemned man as "normal." He said he never saw Mr. Damjanovic in April and May 1992, when the killings were supposed to have occurred.

United Nations international police monitors showed up last summer at Mr. Blekic's new house in Vogosca, which ONCE BELONGED TO A SERB NEIGHBOR, to photograph him and copy the information on his identity card. But this was the last he heard from the United Nations team.

"We are the only Blekic family in Vogosca," he said.

At the end of last year relatives of Mr. Damjanovic reached his lawyer in Sarajevo with the news. And in December [Mr. Damjanovic's lawyer] Mr. Maric filed a motion for a new trial.

[L]ast SUMMER a cousin of Damjanovic's established that Asim and Kasim Blekic, Muslim brothers who were listed among [Mr. Damjanovic's] victims, were alive and well in the Sarajevo suburb of Vogosca...

"The first time I heard I was dead was when Damjanovic's cousin brought a patrol of the international police," Kasim Blekic told reporters. "I told them we were the only Blekic family in the region."

During the trial, Sretko Damjanovic recanted his confession and said he had been severely abused by the Muslim police until he signed the document. The court doctor confirmed at the trial that Mr. Damjanovic had four knife wounds and a broken rib that appeared to have been inflicted while in police custody.

Damjanovic, 36, ... was convicted almost solely on the basis of Herak's testimony and a confession that he told the military tribunal had been extracted under torture soon after his arrest. Throughout the week-long trial he maintained his innocence. He showed the court scars from knife wounds in both legs and a broken rib, all of which a court-appointed doctor said were inflicted during his detention.

In a room at Sarajevo central prison he took off his top, asking: "Do you want me to show you what they did to me?" He slapped his rib cage. "See how my ribs stick out."

His bones protrude. There are scars on his SHOULDERS AND ARMS. Many of his TEETH are missing. And, he claimed, he still URINATES BLOOD. "My health is ruined."

The finding of the brothers has raised troubling questions about how the guilty verdict was reached. The two Serbs, currently in a Sarajevo prison, were condemned to death by a military court.

Discovery of the Muslim brothers has exposed what defense lawyers say was the undue haste of the trial, which produced no physical evidence, and the heavily charged political atmosphere that colored the judicial ruling.

The trial, which was widely covered by the international press, was used by the Muslim Government to publicize the brutal "ethnic cleansing" campaign then being carried out by the Bosnian Serbs.

The trial of the two Serbs, Sretko Damjanovic and Borislav Herak, in March 1993 was the first attempt by the Sarajevo legal system to try Bosnian Serbs for genocide and other war crimes. It was intended to begin a judicial process that would see those Serbs who were responsible for the killings of tens of thousands of Muslims brought to justice.

But it was also used to convince Europe and the United States that the Serbs were guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Sretko Damjanovic, a Serb soldier in the Bosnian civil war, was convicted of genocide four years ago for the murders of five unarmed people, several rapes and various other crimes. Now two of his victims have turned up alive, casting doubt on the testimony that led to his conviction and spurring his lawyer to demand a retrial.

The highly charged case was tried before a military tribunal run by the predominantly Muslim Bosnian government during the dark hours of 1993, when Sarajevo was enduring a long siege under Bosnian Serb artillery. Damjanovic and a friend, Borislav Herak, were convicted together and condemned to death by firing squad, a sentence later reduced to life imprisonment.

Maric, who normally practices corporate and COMMERCIAL LAW, repeatedly sought to have the trial postponed. In a recent interview, he said that in preparing Damjanovic's defense he was not allowed to see his client except in a guard's presence -- "the first time that happened to me in my 24-year career." Maric also said he was given less than 10 days to prepare Damjanovic's defense and recalled having to work by candlelight in the darkened city to complete the appeal on time.

Bosnia's manner of conducting war crimes proceedings is raising doubts whether the accused are getting a fair hearing. Eight are under way, including two cases being heard in the absence of the accused. But the problems of justice in the divided country are long-standing...

The trial was a showcase. With people desperate to see Serbs punished for the atrocities committed during the war, the chances of a fair hearing were slim...

Government officials were reluctant today to discuss the case.

Azra Omeragic [a Muslim], the president of the Sarajevo county court, said there would be an evaluation of the request by the defendant's lawyers for a new trial. But she added that the decision was not the responsibility of her office and had been handed over to the public prosecutor's office. She said she did not want to comment further.

The chief public prosecutor, Domin Malbasic [a Muslim], said the request for a retrial had not reached his office.

Damjanovic's lawyer, Branko Maric, took the new information to Sarajevo's appeals court four months ago and demanded a new trial. The court's president, Azra Omergic, said an answer will be issued next week, and until then Damjanovic and Herak will remain in jail.

Maric argued that the Blekics' existence justifies a retrial because it casts serious doubts on the testimony. But the Sarajevo establishment has reacted as if the brothers' existence were a Balkan plot instead of exculpatory evidence.

Chris Bennett, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, suggested that local reluctance to accept that the 1993 trial was based on faulty evidence is linked to Muslim disappointment with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

"Sadly, it appears that fundamentally this is a society where to some extent people need to blame someone for what happened during the siege," he said. "They think they are getting nothing out of The Hague, which essentially is trying Croats and Muslims, not Serbs. [sic!]

"This is worse than denial," he added. "It's a problem of attitude, when the rights of nations pervade all aspects of society and are deemed more important than justice for a young Serb who is at least innocent of two murders. Why? Because it is more important that he is a Serb; for them, Serbs are guilty. He represents the Serbs -- end of the story."

The discovery that the Blekic brothers are alive was first reported... on Feb. 27. But it was ignored by Bosnian state television. Even the Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodjenje, much honored internationally [by the masters] for its heroic determination to publish daily throughout the city's 3 1/2-year siege, ignored the new evidence for two weeks.

"This is an example of state-controlled media masquerading to the outside world as independent -- something inherited from the old Communist model before the war," said Enver Causevic [a Muslim], president of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Journalists' Union.

A Bosnian court has rejected a call for the retrial of a Serbian soldier convicted of killing two Muslim brothers who were recently found to be alive...

"The court rejected my retrial motion as unfounded," Mr. Maric said today. He plans to appeal.

The court found there was no need for a new investigation, saying "there was plenty of other evidence sufficient for a verdict."

The Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia-Hercegovina - founded in Dayton; made up of eight foreign and six domestic judges - reached a decision in Sarajevo today ordering the Muslim judiciary not to carry out and immediately suspend the death sentences on Sretko Damjanovic, sentenced on 12th March 1993 by the Muslim [Sarajevo] district court for alleged genocide and crimes against civilians. Damjanovic was accused of killing two Muslim brothers in 1992, but the brothers were later found alive.

The judiciary of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation was ordered by 8th November to inform the chamber on the measures taken with the aim of implementing the order.

On 11th December last year Damjanovic brought charges against the Bosnia-Hercegovina Federation because of its violation of the European convention on the protection of human rights and liberties in connection with the trial against him, which the Human Rights Chamber found justified and acceptable.

Commenting on the conclusions regarding the decision on the validity of Damjanovic's appeal in connection with the legal provisions for carrying out the death sentence, the chamber said the execution of the sentence would be the violation of Protocol 6 of this convention, and consequently the violation of Annex 6 of the Dayton Agreement on the part of the Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation is to pay nearly $10,000 in damages to a former Bosnian Serb soldier who is serving a 40-year jail sentence for war crimes, a senior law officer said.

Seada Palavric [a Muslim], the legal attorney of the federation, said Sretko Damjanovic, who was originally sentenced to death, was being compensated for being subjected to the fear of execution.

She said he should by now have received the money, but Damjanovic's lawyer could not confirm this.

The case has provoked outrage in the federation, with Sarajevo media demanding to know who will compensate Bosnian citizens for their fear and suffering through 43 months of war.

The Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Hercegovina has ordered a retrial of Sretko Damjanovic, a Bosnian Serb found guilty of warcrimes in Bosnia, Vecernje Novine daily reported here Saturday.

Damjanovic was sentenced to death by a Sarajevo court in 1993 after being found guilty of genocide and crimes against civilians while fighting for the Bosnian Serb army around Sarajevo in 1992.

In November 1998, a court changed the sentence to 40 years in prison and the Supreme Court of the Moslem-Croat Federation reduced Damjanovic's sentence to 20 years prison in March last year.

Now the Human Rights Chamber has accepted Damjanovic's appeal against the Muslim-Croat Federation and ordered the Federation to organize a new trial, the report said.

The Human Rights Chamber was established in accordance with the Dayton Peace Agreement with the task of monitoring the actions of public authorities, including the judiciary.