Returning war criminal embraced

Opinion: June 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Marija Arnautovic

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

VISEGRAD, Serbia

In contrast to the crowds that filled the streets back in March to welcome home a favorite son, this picturesque town appeared deserted on a recent May morning. The ancient bridge over the Drina River that has served as a symbol of the town for centuries was also empty.

It was from this bridge that hundreds of Bosniaks killed by Serbian forces were thrown into the river during the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

The crowds that turned out in March had come to welcome home one of those convicted of the killings. Mitar Vasiljevic had served two-thirds of this 15-year sentence for his role in the killings. His supporters provided him with a hero’s welcome, complete with music, a parade and crowds calling his name.

For the occasion, Vasil-jevic wore a hat bearing the insignia of the Chetniks, a Serbian nationalist paramilitary that operated in the Balkans before World War II. Vasiljevic told the crowd he had never felt happier in his life.

“I greet my fellow Serbs, the young people and especially children who had not been born when I was last here,” he told them.

He called his war crimes conviction unjust and said all the evidence against him was a lie. Since then, he has declined all requests for interviews.

Keeping mum

Most of the residents of Visegrad — once predominantly a Bosniak town but today inhabited mostly by Serbs — would not talk to strangers about the welcome-home party. Those who would speak said they knew nothing about it.

According to testimony presented at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, 3,000 Bosniak civilians were killed in Visegrad in the war, including 600 women and 119 children. Some of the most horrific crimes of the Bosnian war took place in this town in June 1992, when 140 Bosniaks were burned alive in their houses.

Vasiljevic was at that time a member of a paramilitary unit called “White Eagles,” headed by Milan Lukic, who was recently sentenced by the tribunal to life imprisonment for his role in crimes in the first months of the war. His conviction is currently under review.

Today, more than 15 years after the end of the Bosnian war, Visegrad remains deeply divided. Serbs and Bosniaks greet each other in the street, but rarely socialize.

One of the few Serbs with friends among the town’s Muslim residents is Zoran Maksimovic, who operates a Web site in the town.

He said that the hero’s welcome Vasiljevic received was spontaneous.

“It was organized by a small group of people who spontaneously decided to do this while they were hanging out in a local cafe,” he said. “When news reached them that Vasiljevic was approaching Visegrad, someone suggested that he should be welcomed properly and that’s how it all started.” But others in this town insist the event was meticulously planned and organized by a Serb war veterans’ association.

Bilal Memisevic, a Bosniak and president of the town assembly, said he is trying to make the best of a difficult situation.

Memisevic lost both of his parents during the Bosnian war and says he knows who killed them. In fact, he said, the murderers continue to walk the streets of the town freely today.

Changed man?

Still, Memisevic said he believes justice will eventually be done and that everyone will be held to account for their crimes sooner or later. He claims that relations between the two ethnic groups in the town are “all right and constantly improving.” As for the convicted war criminal one again in their midst, Memisevic would only say, “He had been convicted and served his time in prison. I hope he has learnt something from that. That’s all I’d want to see — that he has changed, that he is no longer the man who committed war crimes here.”

Marija Arnautovic is a reporter in Serbia who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.