Death of a Die Hard

Friday, Apr. 19, 2002
Only a few hours after the Yugoslav parliament approved a bill allowing the extradition of war crimes suspects to The Hague, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, the Serbian interior minister under former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, fired a bullet into his own temple in front of the federal parliament building in Belgrade. Stojiljkovic's 11 April suicide attempt was not immediately successful and he was rushed to hospital, where he remained in critical condition until his death two days later.

The much-discussed Bill on Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, ich allows for the transfer of about 30 indicted suspects, takes effect immediately. Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic said that extraditions will begin soon and be completed by 1 May.

Stojiljkovic served as interior minister from the autumn of 1997 until his ouster in October 2000, when Vojislav Kostunica became president. He held onto his seat in parliament as a prominent official in Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia. A close associate of Milosevic, the two men shared the same hometown — Pozarevac — where Stojiljkovic was chief of police during the 1960s and 1970s.

The Hague indicted Stojiljkovic in May 1999 for his role in the "deliberate and widespread campaign of terror and violence directed at Kosovo Albanian citizens." As interior minister, he was in charge of a police force of around 100,000, including some 15,000 paramilitaries who are accused of committing atrocities against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

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Stojiljkovic had previously warned that he would commit suicide rather than surrender to the tribunal. The week before, Branimir Gugl, Stojiljkovic's legal counselor, told journalists that Stojiljkovic would not surrender to the tribunal until the constitution allowed the extradition of Yugoslav citizens to the tribunal. The Hague bill does provide for extradition of Yugoslav citizens to the tribunal, but only those who are already indicted, while citizens indicted in the future would have their trials in Yugoslavia.

After Stojiljkovic shot himself, his suicide note was read out by Aleksandar Vucic, a prominent member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party. Journalists discovered later that the note was only an excerpt from a 15-page protest letter he had written in June of last year. In his letter, Stojiljkovic blamed leading officials of the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) and the Montenegrin Socialist People's Party for his death because they led "a traitor's policy of capitulation, losing the national identity, destroying the economy and bringing social misery on millions of citizens."

One day after Stojiljkovic turned his gun on himself, Yugoslavia was rocked by another suicide. On 12 April, Yugoslav Secretary of Work, Health and Social Policy Miodrag Kovac, hanged himself in Madrid, where he was heading the Yugoslav delegation at the UN conference on aging. Spanish police didn't publish all the details of his suicide note, which was reported to say that he that "he trusted some people he shouldn't have." Yugoslav media speculated that his suicide may have been a response to recent accusations, made by the Podgorica-based daily Publika, that he played a role in illegally importing medicines.

Serbian political reaction to Stojiljkovic's death was fairly predictable. The Socialist Party of Serbia described his suicide as a "political protest against the treasonous policy of DOS, the judgment of the tribunal, and its helpers" and called his death a "direct result of the Hague bill." Goran Pitic, Serbia's minister for economic relations with foreign countries, denied Stojiljkovic's suicide note accusations. Kostunica described Stojiljkovic's death as a tragic event that "represents [a] warning to the international community that constantly sets conditions, pressures us and dictates our behavior."

"Citizens, patriots of this country, will know how to avenge me," Stojiljkovic wrote ominously in his note. But public reaction has been relatively muted. Stojiljkovic's death has also raised a big question about the new law: Will the other indictees go quietly? The former head of the Yugoslav Army Dragoljub Ojdanic, who is expecting a summons any day, recently said he would not run from the tribunal's justice. The other indictees on the list have so far remained silent.

This article was edited and adapted from Transitions Online. A longer version is available at: http://www.tol.cz www.tol.cz