Witnesses Speak of Police Threats

The war crimes trial of a Croatian politician at the Zagreb County Court heard a barrage of allegations this week that police had tried to force a co-defendant to testify against him with threats against her and her child.



Gordana Getos Magdic’s family sparked a major scandal before Christmas when they published what they said was the transcript of a conversation between ex-police chief Vladimir Faber and her sister, in which the policeman appeared to try to tell the defendant what testimony to make.



Getos Magdic is accused, along with parliament deputy Branimir Glavas and five others, of involvement in the murder of Serb civilians in the city of Osijek in 1991.



According to the indictment, Serb civilians were killed and tortured in the garage of the Osijek Secretariat for Civil Defence, which was headed by Glavas, as well as executed on the banks of the Drava River.



Getos Magdic’s father Andrija Getos took the stand to accuse Faber of trying to force him to tell his daughter that she should admit to being just a messenger so as to avoid more serious charges.



“Faber repeated to me in the first conversation with the police that she is accused by everybody and that the only way she could get out of this was to confirm that she was only the messenger transferring the messages from Glavas,” he said.



“I replied to him that this is simply not true, that this was no good and that something very ugly was being done by the police.”



His evidence was supported by that of Getos Magdic’s husband, Ivica Magdic, who also accused her former lawyer Radoslav Arambasic of threatening her with a long prison term if she did not testify against Glavas.



According to him, Arambasic first advised her to defend herself by silence, before changing his mind and convincing her to sign a confession in which she blames Glavas and which she later retracted.



He said the lawyer had even threatened her with losing custody of her child if she refused to give the statement that Faber asked from her. He said that she had told him so when he visited her in Remetinac prison after her arrest.



But on January 23, Arambasic dismissed the accusations.



“No manipulation with her is possible, I would not be prepared for it, nor would I have any motive or reason to manipulate her,” he said.



“I just transferred (spoke about) legal acts which regulate this question and transferred court’s practice about this situation,” said Arambasic.



He claimed it was her family who initially insisted she remain silent, and accused her father Andrija of making death threats against him, saying they had promised to kill him if she was found guilty. He even accused her family of involvement in the recent abduction of his son.



Glavas is the first Croatian politician to face trial for war crimes, and regained parliamentary immunity with his re-election to parliament in November.



Parliament has since stripped him of his immunity from prosecution, but announced that he was immune from detention. The Zagreb district court and the Supreme Court upheld this decision, making this week the first when he has attended his trial as a free man.



Glavas added to the allegations against Faber, saying the police had invented the charges against him. His defence team requested that the testimonies of Faber and other police officers linked to Getos Magdic’s statement not be heard, but was over-ruled by the court.



The defence teams also asked that Judge Jasmina Dolmagic be excluded from the trial for allegedly giving the press a copy of Getos Magdic’s statement. The judge is currently not attending proceedings, pending a decision from the state attorney’s office on the matter.



Before any testimony was heard, the court denied Glavas’ request that representatives of three non-governmental organisations be barred from the courtroom. The Civil Council for Human Rights, Documenta, and the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights Osijek had publicly protested against parliament’s decision to release Glavas from detention.



They have demanded the constitutional court look into parliament’s decision to enforce Glavas’ immunity from detention.



Goran Jungvirth is an IWPR journalist in Zagreb.