Cracks appear in Milosevic's secret service

publiziert: Freitag, 3. Nov 2000 / 11:40 Uhr

Belgrad - When Branka Prpa read a secret-service surveillance report detailing the last day she spent with her assassinated companion an outspoken critic of Slobodan Milosevic it was like going through a nightmare all over again.

The document describes the moves of Prpa and Slavko Curuvija on April 11, 1999, until moments before the prominent Serb media publisher fell in a spray of automatic-weapons fire as they walked into a dark alley leading to their Belgrade apartment. "When I read the document I was shaken and astonished because I read things that only I could know and which I had not told anyone," Prpa told reporters. "It reveals the mechanisms of a monster state."

The report, made public this week, was apparently leaked by a secret-service officer loyal to the new Yugoslav pro-democracy leadership that unseated Milosevic last month. For the first time, it directly links the former strongman's regime with a spate of high-profile murders, attempted assassinations and kidnappings that have shaken the country over the past several years.

Allegations of Milosevic's involvement in the slaying of his political opponents have mushroomed since the Oct. 5 uprising that forced the former strongman to acknowledge electoral defeat.

Amid the most volatile are newspaper reports that Milosevic drew up a list of 40 prominent pro-democracy figures including new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica to be killed on the night of the revolt.

To date, police have not named Curuvija's killers or published details of the investigation. A series of other killings has also remained unsolved, triggering speculation that the former dictatorial regime was behind them.

"For years we have had the feeling that some dark things are happening within the secret service," said Natasa Kandic, the head of the human rights Humanitarian Law Center, which published the surveillance report Wednesday. "This is the start of revealing those secrets."

The three-page police document details how Curuvija and Prpa casually walked through downtown Belgrade, meeting friends who were also later followed by plainclothes agents and as they had a lunch in a Belgrade restaurant.

The report says that the surveillance, ordered by Radomir Markovic, who remains head of Serbia's secret service and a close Milosevic ally, lasted until only minutes before Curuvija was shot.

The third page of the document says that surveillance was ordered ended so "the three assassins could not be seen" by the plainclothes agents _ the secret police had different teams performing different assignments, with one squad often unaware of the tasks of other units.

Bozidar Prelevic, a co-interior minister in the new Serbian transitional government _ and on paper, at least, Markovic's superior _ said the secret-police chief refused to confirm the document's authenticity but did hint it could be genuine.

"With its style and contents, the first two pages of the document describing surveillance of late Slavko Curuvija are in accordance with similar documents used in the Service," Prelevic said Markovic told him.

"The third page was typed on a different typewriter, it has no formal markings, stamps or signatures," Prelevic said, speaking to journalists. It was apparently written as an explanation by the police officer who leaked the document, other police sources said.

Markovic is "ready to present all findings to the appropriate state bodies and to the public," Prelevic said.

Markovic _ considered the backbone of Milosevic's hardline rule since he was named secret police chief in 1998 _ has refused to step down, despite threats by pro-democrats that they would quit the new government of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic, if he does not.

But the relatively open comments of the usually secretive security boss reveal that he clearly is feeling the heat.

Curuvija, who also worked for the secret service as an analyst in the 1980s, was once close to Milosevic and his influential wife, Mirjana Markovic _ who is no relation to the secret police chief _ before turning into one of their most influential critics. In 1999 he predicted their downfall, unless they introduce major democratic reforms in the country.

Only a few days before his murder on the eve of the start of NATO airstrikes meant to force a Kosovo peace settlement _ the state-run Politika Ekspres daily quoted Milosevic's wife, Markovic, as accusing Curuvija of supporting the United States in the bombing of Yugoslavia and "inviting" the aggressors "to teach Serbians a lesson."

"I felt a strong wind, big dust raised. In fact, those were bullets hitting all around us," Prpa recalled her boyfriend's last moments. "He just fell without uttering a sound. Nothing more."

(AP)

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