Captain Dragan in Defamation Case
Ex-Serbian paramilitary leader wanted by Croatia on war crimes charges said he's been wrongly accused.
Monday, 11 May, 2009
Captain Dragan in Defamation Case
Ex-Serbian paramilitary leader wanted by Croatia on war crimes charges said he's been wrongly accused.
Monday, 11 May, 2009
Belgrade-born Vasiljkovic, 54, also known as Daniel Snedden, moved to Australia with his parents as a child before returning to Serbia in 1991, to fight in Croatia and Bosnia under the nom de guerre Captain Dragan.
Arrested in Australia in January 2006 and held in custody on the basis of a Croatian indictment, charging him with torturing and killing Croatian civilians, he is currently in the maximum security Parklea prison in Sydney waiting for the outcome of his appeal against his extradition to Croatia to face trial there.
Vasiljkovic's court appearance this week was part of his defamation suit against publisher Nationwide News over an article published in The Australian newspaper in September 2005, detailing crimes he allegedly committed as the commander of the notorious Alfa paramilitary unit.
Vasiljkovic has denied the charges.
“I became to my enemy a legend, and I think every Serb on this planet… or at least 90 per cent of them… considers me as a hero… And I don't think there is an Australian that has a reason to be ashamed of me,” he told the court on May 6.
Making an impassioned speech from the witness box, Vasiljkovic told the court that the newspaper's story, which revealed he was living in Perth, was the catalyst for the extradition request from Croatia.
“You started it all. I'm fighting the Goliath, the most powerful man since the dawn of time and I don't have a sling, I have handcuffs,” said Vasiljkovic, while addressing Tom Blackburn, counsel for Nationwide News.
He suggested that being extradited to Croatia could put him in danger.
"I have nothing against the Croats, I know who they are and I know they want to kill me and they will do it. I don't know why you have participated in this cold-blooded murder," he yelled.
Nationwide News is defending the truth of the article and has brought several witnesses to speak of their encounters with Vasiljkovic.
One Bosnian Muslim woman, testifying anonymously, gave evidence that she was raped "five or six times" by Vasiljkovic in a hotel room in Zvornik, Bosnia, where she was held prisoner for three months in 1992.
She said that on one occasion, he ordered several Serbian soldiers to gang-rape her while he watched, and he once force-fed her pork and made her drink alcohol, the consumption of which is forbidden by her religion.
Several Croatian prisoners of war also testified that Vasiljkovic ordered beatings and torture when he was in charge of the prison at a fortress in Knin, the capital of the self-proclaimed breakaway Serbian Republic of Krajina.
Velibor Bracic, 41, a former Croat police officer, testified last week that Serb guards used to beat him up on a regular basis during his imprisonment in 1991, while Vasiljkovic once attacked him personally after watching two guards beat him.
At one point during the hearing, Bracic and Vasiljkovic found themselves face to face after Judge Megan Latham asked the witness to identify him, which he did.
Bracic said he lost 27 kilogrammes during his two-month imprisonment and now suffers from diabetes as a result of his ordeal.
He added that Vasiljkovic’s soldiers beat the prisoners “day and night” at the Knin fortress and later at the Knin hospital, and on one occasion, brought a bear to the cell and forced the prisoners to kiss its behind.
Some guards sexually abused prisoners, added Bracic, while others tortured them by connecting electricity to their genitalia.
Some of them begged Vasiljkovic to end the abuse, because they could not take it any more, he said.
When the judge asked him whether that helped, Bracic responded, “On the contrary, the beatings got worse.”
Responding to the allegations in his testimony, Vasiljkovic became agitated when queried about the accusations of rape and torture, insisting he had never even met the woman accusing him of rape.
Blackburn then questioned him over comments he reportedly made in an 1991 interview to a journalist working for the British newspaper The Times.
In the article dated July 15, 1991, Vasiljkovic was quoted as saying that “when the Croatian side uses hospitals or police stations and the villages as fortified positions, I'm sorry, I just have to massacre them”.
“That doesn't sound like me. Do I look like an idiot?" he told the court, adding that he may, however, have said something similar.
Vasiljkovic said he had always believed it was wrong to harm anyone, regardless of their ethnicity.
He said he had absolute authority over the people under his command, and knew they were never responsible for any abuse of prisoners.
“Nothing could have happened without me knowing about it," he said.
The final witness in the defamation hearing is due to give evidence on May 11.
Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR-trained reporter in Zagreb.
