Testifying Against Slobodan Milosevic at Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia
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Version 0 of 1. THE HAGUE — SHE chose the anonymity of a railroad station to talk about the unbearable weight of leading a double life. She had never planned it this way. When the young woman from Belgrade volunteered to testify in one of the most sensational war crimes cases in decades, involving the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, she was promised anonymity. She was given a code name, Witness B-129, and her face and voice were electronically altered on the monitors of the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague when she testified in 2003. Until, that is, a technician mistakenly released portions of her real voice, and it was broadcast live in Serbia. Soon after she returned home, someone tried to kill her. Witness B-129 is now among witnesses of international courts who live under police protection programs, far from home, with new names and cover stories to hide their identities. “For Serbia, I’m a traitor,” said the slight woman with a modest manner, now 42. “But helping the court has ruined my life.” Witness B-129 sought out a reporter, who under court rules cannot reveal her location and identity, to talk about the high price she feels she has paid for testifying against Mr. Milosevic and the Serbian secret police. The past 11 years, she said, were like being “inside a labyrinth.” “We were told we could lead a normal life,” she said. Instead, she and her husband feel trapped as wards of unresponsive bureaucracies, those of the United Nations tribunal and of the police in her new land. “You’re not like an immigrant,” Witness B-129 said. “When you get a new identity, you lose everything: your friends, your property, your contact with your family, your driver’s license, your own history.” Often, she added, “I feel like I’m even losing my mind.” Tribunal officials in The Hague and the police in the witness’s new country of residence refused to discuss her case. But her story was largely corroborated by court documents and letters she showed, and by lawyers who dealt with the case, providing a rare look into an important but deeply hidden part of modern international justice. ALL modern war crimes tribunals depend heavily on witnesses because large-scale killings, torture or rape rarely come with a paper trail leading to those responsible. Many testify under pseudonyms, but only a small portion of witnesses are deemed so endangered that they are secretly moved to another country and given new names. Their numbers and whereabouts are closely held secrets, and next to nothing is publicly known about how they fare. They are told they will be cut loose from the program if they reveal their original identities. Journalists are warned that they risk prosecution for contempt of court if they disclose the name or the location of any protected witness, and some have been convicted. “Witness protection is an incredibly important issue,” said Herman von Hebel, the chief administrator of the International Criminal Court, while attending a recent panel discussion in The Hague on witness safety. “Without witnesses, without key insiders, there are basically no trials.” Witness B-129 was such an insider. For two days, she transfixed the court during the Milosevic trial as she described her work as a trusted aide to Zeljko Raznatovic — better known as Arkan — a shady Serbian entrepreneur with arrest warrants across Europe. In the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, Mr. Raznatovic created a militia, the Tigers, or Serbian Volunteer Guard. They quickly became notorious for smuggling, looting and killing in neighboring Croatia and Bosnia. Mr. Milosevic claimed during his trial in The Hague that he knew nothing about the Tigers’ activities. But citing meticulous details from her office logbook from 1994 and 1995, Witness B-129 testified that Mr. Raznatovic and the Tigers were controlled, deployed and paid for by Mr. Milosevic’s intelligence and security chiefs. It was part of her job to count money and stuff it into envelopes for the fighters, she told the tribunal. Mr. Raznatovic never dispatched his men without orders from Mr. Milosevic’s deputies, she added, and he boasted openly that he never took prisoners. Mr. Raznatovic was indicted on war crimes charges in 1997, but he was shot and killed in a Belgrade hotel lobby in 2000. “An extraordinary witness,” one former prosecutor recalled, speaking of Witness B-129. In a letter, another prosecutor wrote that her evidence showed the full extent of Serbia’s complicity with the “criminal” Tigers. During one of a series of interviews, the witness described having gone to work for Mr. Raznatovic because she was a young law student at the time and needed the money. At first she believed that the Tigers were fighting to defend the Serbian people, but she became disillusioned. “What I saw was all about power and killing,” she said. “It was about smuggling and getting rich. And many people died for nothing.” Anger made her want to testify in 2003, after she watched broadcasts of the trial of the former Yugoslav president. “Milosevic was lying and denying everything, even the links with Arkan,” she said. “I felt I should speak out. I saw things that most people would not know or even admit.” When she returned home after her testimony, she found a plainclothes police officer posted outside her building. A few weeks later, her relatives received threatening phone calls. One evening, as she crossed her street, a car lunged forward and tried to knock her down. She said she recognized the driver, a secret-police officer who had been posted outside her home. Tribunal staff quickly took her and her husband out of the country, first to Croatia, then to a safe house in the Netherlands. They had to wait 18 months until a European government accepted them in a national witness protection system. LIFE in their new country came as a shock. “We were sent to a house full of black mold, barely furnished, no kitchen or bathroom,” she recalled. In Belgrade, they had owned their own apartment. She had run a language institute, and her husband worked for an aid organization. Now, unable to show their diplomas, they have both had to take low-paying, part-time jobs as shop assistants and take turns caring for their three children, who were all born in exile. Their debts keep growing, and rent arrears have landed them in court, she said. Then there are the lies, “the small lies and bigger lies” that do not go away. “I have to lie to the kids about why they don’t see their grandparents,” Witness B-129 said. She finds it difficult to make real friends. “I’m always afraid to misspeak,” she said. “I get sick a lot but I have to lie to the doctor about why I get so depressed, why I can’t sleep, why I often feel I’m going mad.” An enduring angst about the loss of a sense of self seemed to haunt her. She paused and stared at her lunch. “It’s hard to believe, but 10 years ago I was a confident person,” she said, almost whispering. “Now I can get a panic attack before going into a bank or a shop. I feel as if I did something wrong. The hiding makes you feel like a criminal.” FIVE years ago, when she was pressed to testify in a second war crimes trial, she extracted promises from a tribunal prosecutor and her police minders to organize the sale of her Belgrade apartment so that she could repay her debts. “I am not allowed to sell it myself,” she said. “I can no longer prove who I am.” Today, she is still waiting and pleading for the sale, while the tangle of paperwork goes back and forth between the tribunal and the police. “I’m not even eligible for legal aid because I’m not a criminal,” she said with a fleeting smile. Even kindly people in the tribunal “do not really understand what people go through” in a police protection scheme, she said. “The problem is, these schemes are designed for criminals who turn on each other and help the police, and not for citizen witnesses,” said a lawyer familiar with the case. At one point, Witness B-129 received a small grant from the tribunal to allow her to complete her law studies, but she said her life has been in too much turmoil to do so. The police have recently advanced her a loan, against the future sale of the apartment. This year, with fresh passports in their new names, the couple were finally able to take a short trip to Serbia for the first time since they left 11 years ago. But Witness B-129 cannot shake the feeling that her sacrifices have been in vain. Mr. Milosevic died in prison in 2006, before his trial concluded. Two Serbian officials against whom she later testified behind closed doors were recently acquitted. “I feel used,” she said. “They are free at home, and I am trapped in this life. I’m worse off, but I committed no crime.” |