Milan Lukić

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Milan Lukić (Милан Лукић) (born 1967, in Rujiste, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia) was the leader of the White Eagles, a group of paramilitaries charged by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia with having committed, from May 1992 until October 1994, a multitude of crimes in the Višegrad municipality of Bosnia and Herzegovina including murder, torture, assault, looting and the destruction of property [1]. Lukić, his cousin Sredoje Lukić, and a close family friend Mitar Vasiljević were initially indicted by the ICTY in 1998 [2]. The amended indictment in Case IT-98-32-PT, dated 12 July 2001, charges Lukić specifically with the deaths of approximately 150 men, women and children [3] but it is believed that Lukić and his paramilitary group may have killed thousands of civilians during the period from April 1992 to October 1993.


Contents

[edit] Background on Višegrad

Višegrad is one of several towns along the Drina River in close proximity to the Serbian border (then Yugoslavia). According to the census taken before the conflict in 1991 the municipality had a population of 21,199: 62.8% of Muslim ethnicity, 32.8% Serb and 4.4% classified as others.

The town was strategically important during the conflict. A nearby hydroelectric dam provided electricity and also controlled the level of the Drina River, preventing flooding in areas downstream. The town is situated on the main road connecting Belgrade and Užice in Serbia with Goražde and Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a vital link for the Užice Corps of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) with its base camp in Uzamnica as well as other strategic locations implicated in the conflict.

On 6 April 1992, JNA units began an artillery bombardment of the town, in particular Muslim neighbourhoods and nearby Muslim villages. A small group of Bosnian Muslim men took several local Serbs hostage and seized control of the hydroelectric dam, threatening to blow it up. One of the men released water from the dam causing flooding to some houses and streets.

Eventually on 12 April 1992, JNA commandos seized the dam. The next day the Užice Corps of the JNA from Užice took control of Višegrad, positioning tanks and heavy artillery around the town. The population that had fled the town during the crisis returned and the climate in the town remained relatively calm and stable during the later part of April and the first two weeks of May.

On 19 May 1992 the JNA Užice Corps officially withdrew from the town and local Serb leaders established the Serbian Municipality of Višegrad, taking control of all municipal government offices. Soon after, local Serbs, police and paramilitaries began one of the most notorious campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the conflict, designed to permanently rid the town of its Bosnian Muslim population.

Serb forces attacked and destroyed a number of Bosnian Muslim villages. A large number of unarmed Muslim civilians in the town of Višegrad were killed. The Drina River was used to dump many of the bodies of the Muslim men, women and children who were killed around the town and on the historic Turkish bridge crossing the Drina. Serb forces were implicated in the systematic looting and destruction of Muslim homes and villages. Both of the town’s mosques were completely destroyed.

Many of the Muslims who were not immediately killed were detained at various locations in the town, as well as the former JNA military barracks at Uzamnica (5 kilometres outside of Višegrad), the Vilina Vlas Hotel and other detention sites in the area. Those detained at Uzamnica were subjected to inhumane conditions, including regular beatings, torture by Serbs and strenuous forced labour. The Vilina Vlas Hotel was used as a rape camp.

Milan Lukić, who before the war had lived for a time abroad in Germany and Switzerland, and at home in Obrenovac returned to Višegrad in 1992. He organised the group of local paramilitaries referred to variously as the White Eagles, the Avengers or the Wolves, with ties to the Višegrad police and Serb military units. This group committed numerous crimes in the Višegrad municipality including murder, rape, torture, beatings, looting and destruction of property, and played a prominent role in the ethnic cleansing of the town and surrounding area of its Bosniak inhabitants.


[edit] The Indictment

The amended ICTY "Višegrad case" indictment[[4]] dated August 12, 2001 charged Milan and Sredoje Lukić, and Mitar Vasiljević of having acted in concert with other unknown individuals and committed, planned, instigated, ordered, and otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation, and execution of:

  • the extermination of a significant number of Bosnian Muslim civilians, including women, children and the elderly
  • the persecution of Bosnian Muslim civilians on political, racial, and religious grounds, throughout the municipality of Visegrad and elsewhere in the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina by and through the murder, cruel and inhumane treatment including severe beatings over extended periods of time, unlawful detention and confinement under inhumane conditions, harassment, humiliation, terrorisation and psychological abuse of Bosnian Muslim and other non-Serb civilians,

and

  • the theft and destruction of personal property of Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serb civilians.

Lukić is charged personally with:

  • on or about June 7, 1992 shooting and killing seven Bosnian Muslim men forced to line up along the bank of the Drina River;
  • on or about June 10, 1992, shooting and killing seven Bosnian Muslim men from the Varda furniture factory in Visegrad along the bank of the river by the factory;
  • on or about June 14, 1992, barricading approximately 65 Bosnian Muslim women, children and elderly men in one room of a house in Pionirska street in Nova Mahala in Visegrad municipality, placing an incendiary device in the room, engulfing them and the house in flames, and firing automatic weapons at people who tried to escape through the windows causing the death of some and the injury of others;
  • on or about June 27, 1992, barricading approximately 70 Bosnian Muslim people into a house in the settlement of Bikavac, near Visegrad, and throwing explosive devices into the house which injured the people inside and ignited the house, causing the death of all of the people in the house except for one survivor;
  • on multiple occasions between approximately August 1992 and October beating Bosnian Muslim men who were detained at the detention camp at the Uzamnica military barracks in Visegrad with their fists, rifle butts and wooden sticks, and kicking them with their boots, as a result of which many of the victims suffered serious and permanent injuries;
  • in or about June 1992, shooting Hajra Koric, a Bosnian Muslim woman from the "Potok" neighbourhood in Visegrad and causing her death.

These alleged crimes were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Bosnian Muslim civilians and other non-Serb civilians of the municipality of Visegrad and its surrounding area.

[edit] Other crimes

Other war crimes of which Lukić has been found guilty or is alleged to have committed include:

  • the execution of 16 Muslims taken from a bus on the Bosnian-Serbian border on 22 October 1992, when the paramilitary group under Lukić's leadership stopped a group of Bosnian Muslims and Serbs from Sandžak, then Yugoslavia, on their way to work in Priboj, Serbia, as the bus on which they were travelling briefly crossed into eastern Bosnia and passed through the Serb-controlled village of Mioce. The Muslim passengers were forced out of the bus; the Serbian ones were left to continue on towards Priboj. The Bosnian Muslims (15 men and 1 women) were put on a truck where they were forced to sing Serb nationalist songs as they were severely beaten. When they reached Višegrad they were taken to the "Vilina Vlas" spa hotel and tortured before being taken to the river Drina where they were beaten and shot at with automatic rifles. Those who survived had their throats cut and their bodies thrown into the river. (Lukic was sentenced in absentia to 20 years imprisonment by a Serbian court in 2003.)
  • other abductions in the Sandžak region in October 1992 during the same period as the Sevjerin/Mioce abduction;
  • the hijacking of the Belgrade-Bar train at Strpci in Bosnia-Herzegovina on 27 February 1993, and the abduction and subsequent murder of 20 civilian passengers - 19 Muslims and one ethnic Croat. those abducted were taken by the group to the village of Preljevo near Visegrad, where they were beaten and robbed. One person was shot and wounded by Nebojsa Ranisavljevic when he tried to escape, and was then bayonetted to death by the leader of the paramilitary group, Milan Lukić. The others were subsequently shot and their bodies thrown into the nearby river Drina. ("Documents from the state railway company presented at the trial of Nebojsa Ranisavljevic clearly demonstrated the complicity of former political and military authorities in planning such abductions," according to Amnesty International).
  • the killing of 84 of the 85 men, women and children members of Bosnian Muslim families in Visegrad offered safe conduct to the Bosnian-controlled town of Olovo by Lukić. Halfway there the buses were stopped and the passengers were told to get off and run. The Serb troops led by Lukić fired at their backs. Only one survived.
  • rape, torture and killing of Bosniak women at the Vilina Vlas Hotel rape camp and the beating and killing of men and boys at the spa hotel.


[edit] After the war

After the war, Lukić is alleged to have become involved in a variety of criminal rackets operating across the porous border between Serbia and Republik Srpska.

In 1998 ICTY prosecutors charged him with 11 counts of crimes against humanity and nine other counts of violations of the laws or customs of war.

For a long time he lived quite openly, keeping an apartment in Belgrade and was often seen around Višegrad and in Serbia, where he owned an apartment in Belgrade. The Bosnian Serb and Serbian authorities took no action to hand Lukić over to the ICTY even though he was repeatedly charged with racketeering and other organised crime offences and arrested three times by Serbian police during the 1990s on charges including illegal possession of firearms, forging of documents and the murder of a Serb from Višegrad who had helped Bosnian Muslims flee the town. Each time he was released.

Lukić was linked to Radovan Karadžić, as part of a drug-smuggling ring connected to Karadžić's business network whose profits funded the "Preventiva" network that protected Karadžić and provided Lukić with cover. Lukić's cousin and patron, Sretan Lukić, deputy interior minister of the Serbian state, in charge of the Serbian police, also helped protect him.

In early 2003, Lukić quarreled with the Preventiva and after Sretan's indictment by the ICTY his removal from office in Serbia and deportation to The Hague left Milan vulnerable. In September 2003 he was sentenced in absentia by a Serbian court to 20 years in jail for the Sevjerin/Mioce abduction and killings (see above).

In January 2004, Lukić quarrelled with Karadžić’s armed body guards and a shootout over the size of the cut that Lukić would receive for a particular drugs shipment reportedly left Lukić injured. By the time that a report was published in April 2004 by Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (IWPR/BIRN) linking him to Radovan Karadžić, Lukić had vanished. He sent an e-mail from a server in Brazil denying that he was a traitor to Karadžić and declaring that "Mladić has always been and will remain the true hero and idol, and Karadžić, the leader of my people".

He was arrested in Argentina in August 2005, in Buenos Aires, and returned to The Hague. On February 24, 2006 he made his initial appearance before the Tribunal and pleaded not guilty to twelve counts of crimes against humanity (persecution, murder [5 counts], inhumane acts [4 counts], extermination [2 counts]) and nine counts of violations of the laws or customs of war (murder [5 counts], cruel treatment [4 counts]).

Lukić is currently (January 2007) awaiting trial. His case may be referred to the Bosnian courts. His co-indictee Mitar Vasiljević has been convicted and sentenced for his part in crimes allegedly committed in association with Lukić.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Case (ICTY):

[edit] External links

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