Karadzic’s Family Bemoan Harassment in Montenegro

09 05 2007  Relatives of war-crimes fugitive claim police target them for standing by their ‘hero’.

By Bojana Stanisic in Podgorica

Radovan Karadzic’s brother, Luka, and his sister, Ivanka Djurdjevac, are bitter. They say the Montenegrin police have treated their family so badly that they are thinking of leaving the Adriatic republic for good.

Close relatives of the most wanted fugitive from the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, say that for 10 years they have routinely experienced routine stalking, phone tapping and even detention.

“Imagine what it’s like to have a third party monitoring your family’s most intimate telephone conversations,” Luka Karadzic told Balkan Insight, “or what it’s like be stalked and detained regularly for no reason.”

The Montenegrin police do not discuss the Karadzics’ complaints in public. A spokeswoman, Tamara Popovic, declined to answer Balkan Insight’s questions about them.

Reports that the family intended to leave Montenegro first surfaced after the police swooped on five of them at once.

On March 18, they took in Luka’s wife, Milica, who was on a short visit to Montenegro, his daughter, Radmila Karadzic-Tomovic, her husband Radan Tomovic, Karadzic’s sister, Ivanka Djurdjevac and a cousin. They were detained under suspicion of offering Karadzic logistical support.

They said they were picked up simultaneously. As a result, none was aware that the others had been brought in at the same time.

Ivanka Djurdjevac and Radmila Karadzic-Tomovic said the police grilled them about Karadzic’s whereabouts and about whether they were aiding and abetting him.

The family’s troubles began in 1996, when The Hague Tribunal pressed charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Karadzic in connection with the large-scale massacres that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-5 conflict.

Karadzic never answered the charges in court after going to ground and disappearing from the public eye.

While he remains at large, his family are under surveillance as a result of concern that they may be supporting him.

“The police think they can find out something through us but we don’t know where Radovan is,” Luka Karadzic said. He added: “Even if we did, would never give him away.”

Luka does not have to worry about the Montenegrin police personally. He left Niksic for Belgrade several years ago. The family home in the Niksic suburbs has been deserted since their mother, Jovanka, died last year.

But Luka says Radovan is in his thoughts. In spite of the grave crimes he is accused of perpetrating against Muslim Bosniaks and other non-Serbs, he regards his brother as a hero.

“I am proud of Radovan and of what he has done for the Serbs and the Bosnian Serb Republic,” Luka said.

Though he sometimes visits Montenegro to make sure the house in Niksic is all right, Luka is determined to sell it and sever ties with Montenegro because of the harassment of his relatives.

Luka says their human rights have been violated too often. After the Montenegrin police questioned his wife, Milica, in March, she wrote an open letter to Montenegro’s President, Filip Vujanovic, and to the Prime Minister, Zeljko Sturanovic, expressing her resentment.

“We have been deprived of any freedom,” she wrote. She demanded an end to “the harassment” to which she and her family were being exposed; she could no longer put up with “threats, abuse and humiliation”.

Milica Karadzic said the pressure was clearly designed to make the family abandon their fugitive relative. But echoing her husband, she said: “We will never renounce him”.

Karadzic’s sister, Ivanka Djurdjevac, who still lives in Montenegro, says she, too, is a victim of harassment. Living in the village of Lukovo, 12 kilometres from Niksic, where she herds cattle in the surrounding hills, she dreams of her eventual reunion with her beloved brother.

“Not a minute goes by without him in my thoughts,” she said. “I keep wondering whether he has enough to eat and drink and a pillow to rest his head on when he goes to sleep.”

Djurdjevac said the police brought her in for interrogation on March 18 after they picked her up at 2am.

She said her entire family had been deprived of its rights and claimed the relationship to Radovan explained why her sons did not have jobs and why her husband had been denied a disability pension. “Being Radovan’s sister is my only sin,” she told Balkan Insight.

Like her brother and his wife, even if she knew where Radovan was hiding, she would never give him away; not even if “they tore off my flesh”.

She also wishes to sell her property and leave Montenegro, however, to escape from the problems that come from being Radovan Karadzic’s next of kin.

Karadzic’s niece, Radmila, and her family say they have also suffered unwarranted harassment. Police have detained her and her husband for interrogation several times, and they claim their telephone conversations are tapped all the time. “The last time they brought me in, they reproduced a telephone conversation I had had 10 years before,” Radmila Karadzic-Tomovic told Balkan Insight.

“I have to put up with constant police harassment,” she went on. “They searched my house in Rastoci and separated me from my 10-month old baby for several hours while they were at it.”

Montenegrin citizens are divided on the Karadzic question. A pensioner named Rade said Karadzic stood for “srpstvo” - Serbdom. “Radovan was just defending his people ; it’s a shame what the authorities are doing,” he said.

But Podgorica civil servant Marko disagreed. “He should be arrested immediately and punished for all the crimes he committed,” he insisted.

A law student named Katarina took the same line. “Srebrenica should not be forgotten”, she said referrring to the 1995 massacre of Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town. “The pain of those families would be alleviated by arresting the initiator of these crimes,” she added.

Aleksandar Zekovic, a human rights researcher, said the Montenegrin police had no choice but to go to considerable lengths to locate Karadzic.

Zekovic maintained that the family might have faced similar problems, even if they had moved to another state: “No matter what country they went to, they would face the same situation.”

“On the other hand, they should not be discriminated against,” he concluded.

Bojana Stanisic is a Balkan Insight contributor in Podgorica. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.