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Bosnia and Hercegovina January 1997 Vol. 9, No. 1 (D) BOSNIA AND HERCEGOVINA The Unindicted: Reaping the Rewards of AAAEthnic Cleansing@@@ SUMMARY ...............................................................................................................................................................3 The Importance of Conditionality for Reconstruction Aid.............................................................................5 RECOMMENDATIONS............................................................................................................................................7 BACKGROUND......................................................................................................................................................12 THE ROLE OF THE PRIJEDOR AUTHORITIES DURING THE WAR AND AFTER THE SIGNING OF THE DAYTON PEACE AGREEMENT.............................................................................................................14 The ACrisis Committee@and Co-Conspirators...............................................................................................14 WHO=S WHO IN PRIJEDOR ..................................................................................................................................17 Simo Drljaca: Former Chief of Police and Head of Secret Police ...............................................................17 Wartime Activities..........................................................................................................................18 Simo Drljaca and the Prijedor AMafia@ ...........................................................................................22 Ranko Mijic: Acting Chief of Police ...........................................................................................................23 Zivko Jovic: Acting Deputy Chief of Police................................................................................................23 Grozdan Mutic: Head of State Security .......................................................................................................23 Milomir Stakic: Mayor of Prijedor...............................................................................................................23 Momcilo Radanovic, a.k.a. ACigo@: Deputy Mayor of Prijedor....................................................................25 Srdjo Srdic: President of the ASerbian Red Cross@ Prijedor.........................................................................26 The Role of the Local Red Cross in AEthnic Cleansing ..................................................................26 Milan AMico@ Kovacevic: Director of Prijedor Hospital..............................................................................28 Pero Colic: (Former) Commander Fifth Kozara Brigade and the Forty-Third Brigade, Prijedor.................29 Milenko Vukic: Infrastructure (Electricity)..................................................................................................31 Marko Pavic: Infrastructure (Post Office, Telephone and Telegraph) .........................................................31 MEDIA.....................................................................................................................................................................32 Radio Prijedor..............................................................................................................................................32 Kozarski Vjesnik (Kozara Herald, Newspaper)............................................................................................33 Television Prijedor.......................................................................................................................................34 THE PRIJEDOR AUTHORITIES AND VIOLATIONS OF THE DAYTON PEACE AGREEMENT .................34 Non-Compliance with the Dayton Peace Agreement: The Prijedor Police..................................................34 Drljaca Ousted, Turns Up Again ....................................................................................................36 Persons Indicted for War Crimes Serve as Police Officers in Prijedor and Omarska .....................37 Restructuring the Police Force........................................................................................................39 Police Weapons ..............................................................................................................................40 Ljubija Special Police Force...........................................................................................................42 Obstruction of Freedom of Movement by Prijedor Authorities ...................................................................43 Elections ......................................................................................................................................................47 ADisappearances@ .........................................................................................................................................48 Detention .....................................................................................................................................................51 Harassment of Journalists and Monitors ......................................................................................................51 Evictions and Harassment of Persons Based Upon Their Ethnic or Political Affiliation.............................52 Destruction of Property to Prevent Repatriation ..........................................................................................54 Linkages and Loyalties ................................................................................................................................55 THE ECONOMICS OF AETHNIC CLEANSING@..................................................................................................59 Tangled in the Web: Reconstruction Aid and the Architects of AEthnic Cleansing .....................................63 British ODA Response to Information Gathered by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki...................................65 Aid to the Prijedor Hospital.........................................................................................................................66 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................................67 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................................................69 APPENDIX A: Structure of the ACrisis Committee@ of Prijedor Municipality: 1992...............................................70 APPENDIX B: Letter from Republika Srpska President Biljana Plavsic to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan ...71 SUMMARY The same warlords who took control of the town of Prijedor, in northwestern Bosnia and Hercegovina, through systematic policies of ethnic cleansing -- including pre-meditated slaughter, concentration camps, mass rape, and the takeover of businesses, government offices, and all communal property -- have retained total control over key economic, infrastructure, and humanitarian sectors of the community in the post-war period. The architects of Aethnic cleansing,@ many of whom are under investigation by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, interact daily with representatives of international organizations. This contact grants them a wholly undeserved legitimacy, given that they achieved their positions by Adisappearing@ the duly elected mayor of the town, Muhamed Cehajic, and thousands of other Bosniak or Bosnian Croat community leaders and citizens. While international attention previously focused on the atrocities committed during and after the takeover of the town, little attention has been given to the fact that the mayor, deputy mayor, police chief, hospital director and director of the local ARed Cross@ got away with their crimes and became rich men in the process, having expropriated businesses, homes, and other assets of the non-Serbs of the community, estimated to be worth several billion German marks. In Prijedor, as elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia, the international community=s failure to detain war criminals or to control ongoing abuses by unindicted war criminals has combined with the donation of aid to enrich and empower many of the very people most responsible for genocide and Aethnic cleansing.@ As we have recently also done in Doboj and Teslic, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki has conducted field research in Prijedor to uncover who is continuing the cycle of human rights abuses and intimidation and why these criminals remain at large and in positions of power. The detrimental impact that Bosnia=s war criminals continue to have on respect for human rights and on long-term prospects for peace is abundantly clear. It is essential to the peace process in Bosnia and Hercegovina that the international community strategically utilize the economic and political leverage at its disposal to facilitate the successful implementation of the civilian components of the Dayton agreement, most important of which is to hold war criminals accountable and to bring an end to ongoing abuses against vulnerable populations in the region. The Bosnian administrative district of Prijedor, located west of the city of Banja Luka in what is now Republika Srpska, was before 1992 a multi-ethnic area with a non-Serb population of well over 50,000. After the Bosnian Serbs
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