Destruction of Evidence on
Crimes against Kosovo Albanians
6 April 1999

A refrigerated truck full of corpses was pulled out of the Danube at the Iron Gates near Kladovo on 6 April 1999. Earlier that day, fishermen from Tekija had noticed the corner of some kind of container jutting out of the river. They immediately notified the police who dispatched Boško Rajkovi?, a criminal investigations technician, and Živojin “Žika” Djordjevi?, a professional diver from Kladovo, to the scene.
The police and the investigators released no information. The public was informed of the event two years later, on 1 May 2001, by the Timo?ka krimi revija, a Zaje?ar newspaper founded and owned by Dragan Vitomirovi?, in an report headed “When we opened the back doors of the refrigerated truck, bodies started tumbling out – fifty of them. Then there was a clampdown on information about the case and it was declared a state secret.”
First on the scene
“When we reached the spot,” Djordjevi? told the Timo?ka krimi revija, “and saw part of the object sticking out of the river, I dived. Soon, not far from the bank, I found a big refrigerated truck. The front was partly lodged in the river bed because the engine made it heavier, and the back, the refrigerated unit, which was insulated with Styrofoam and therefore lighter, was nearer the surface. I established that it was a Mercedes truck, with a green driver’s cabin and white refrigerated unit. On the sides was an inscription in Albanian saying the vehicle was the property of a meat processing and transport firm from Pe? and the firm’s phone number: 029/22-997. The windshield was missing; it probably fell out when the truck hit the water as it plunged into the Danube. The truck looked new. It was undamaged and even the headlights were intact. I routinely entered the driver’s cab. There was a key in the ‘Bos’ ignition. A rather large stone was lying on the gas pedal, indicating that someone had deliberately put it there and let the truck lunge into the water...”
No on-site investigation
The technician and diver immediately notified the Kladovo Police Department about what they had found: Police Chief Vukašin Sperli? and Head of the Criminal Investigations Division Milan Stevanovi?, as well as Mirko Petkovi?, the Deputy Municipal Prosecutor, and Tomislav Milojkovi?, Investigating Judge with the Kladovo Municipal Court. Following brief consultations at the Police Department, the District Public Prosecutor’s Office and District Court in Negotin were informed and instructions received from them to start the necessary preparations for an on-site investigation.
There was, however, no on-site investigation. Following the chain of command, the Kladovo police informed the Police Department in Bor and they the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Orders soon arrived that no on-site investigation was to be conducted and that no information about the refrigerated truck was to be released. The scene was cordoned off and the curious onlookers swiftly dispersed (Timo?ka krimi revija, 1 May 2001).
Investigation
Miroslav Srzendi?, the District Prosecutor in Negotin, said he took the first steps in the investigation into the refrigerated truck containing 50 bodies that was found in the Danube near Kladovo two years ago.
“Due to the circumstances, the Kladovo Police Department was notified that a truck containing bodies had been found. I was informed by Police Chief Milan Stevanovi? and the Kladovo Deputy District Prosecutor, Mirko Petkovi?. I gave instructions to secure the truck at the location and insisted that District Prosecutor Mr Majstorovi?, who is now retired, be informed, which he was. The next day, I was told that there would be no autopsies, that the case never happened, that it was a secret.” (B92, 4 May 2001).
“Krsta Majstorovi? told us that there would be no on-site investigation. When I asked why not, he replied, ‘Because nothing happened,’ said Srzendi?” (Danas, 5 May 2001).
“I was surprised, but in view of the state of war, the situation at the time, I had to comply with the Prosecutor’s orders and believed it was the right thing to do,” said Srzendi?. Asked if it was known from where the truck had come, Srzendi? replied he was only told that it was “full of corpses... children, elderly men, and women. I recall that someone mentioned that the numbers on the chassis and engine were different” (B92, 4 May 2001).
Krsta Majstorovi?, formerly the Negotin District Prosecutor, said all the documentation on the refrigerated truck containing 50 bodies found in the Danube was at the Bor Police Department. Majstorovi?, now retired, confirmed that the truck was pulled out of the Danube near Kladovo during the NATO attack on FR Yugoslavia, and that the Prosecutor’s Offices in Kladovo and Negotin and the police in Kladovo and Bor were notified. “All of us at the Prosecutor’s Office knew that an investigation had been instituted and that the Police Department and Prosecutor’s Office had then ordered the case to be classified as a state secret,” Majstorovi? said. He declined to say who specifically had issued the order (Glas, 8 May 2001).
Tomislav Milojkovi?, an investigating judge with the Municipal Court who was at the scene in April 1999, said: “The news that a refrigerated truck had been sighted in the Danube ran around Kladovo. So I and Mirko Petkovi?, the Deputy Municipal Prosecutor, went to the scene. The operation to pull out the vehicle, in which Živojin Žika Petrovi? was participating, was already under way when we arrived. It was expected to take four or five hours. Kladovo Police Chief Vukašin Sperli?, Head of the Criminal Investigations Department Milan Stevanovi?, and criminal investigations technician Boško Rajkovi? were also at the scene. A group of onlookers from Tekija were some 30 meters away. When the back of the truck was pulled to the bank and opened, we saw a horrible sight. There was a pile of bodies inside, of both sexes and all ages. Some were half-clothed. The truck was immediately closed and I, realizing that the case was not in my jurisdiction, informed the competent authorities in Negotin (Danas, 9 May 2001).
Witnesses
Four employees of the Funerals Department of the Komunalac company in Kladovo who wished to remain anonymous told news reporters they had unloaded the corpses from the refrigerated truck pulled from the Danube at Tekija on 6 April 1999:
“We worked for two nights, starting after 10 p.m., by the light of electric torches. The first night we unloaded the corpses from the truck, which had been pulled up to the bank and opened. We carried them in blankets and sheets. The stench was awful. The truck was hauled out of the river the next day. We loaded them into a FAP truck without a tarpaulin cover. It had ordinary registration plates but I don’t know from where. I don’t know where the bodies were taken because we left before the truck drove off.” The employee who spoke with Danas said the four of them arrived at the scene during the day but did not start work until nightfall. They were told that the bodies in the truck were of refugees or Turks who had plunged into the river. He saw bodies of men, women, elderly men and children. Some had been dismembered. The truck was without registration plates and the logo on the refrigerated unit had been painted over. When he arrived for work the next day, he saw that the truck had been hoisted onto a flatbed trailer. He did not know to whom this trailer belonged nor to which destination it was driven (Danas, 11 May 2001).
Sreten Savovi?, manager of the Komunalac company in Kladovo, whose employees for two nights handled dismembered human bodies on the river bank and the highway, said:
“At the request of the Kladovo Police Department, my employees went to the scene during the day, toward the end of business hours. We sent two coffins which, together with the workers, were soon sent back to Kladovo. The refrigerated truck was in the water. It was much heavier than believed at first and a 20-ton crane was unable to haul it out right away. A new request came during the night and four workers went to reload the bodies that had been taken out.”
Ljubiša Brankovi?, manager of the Gradnja company, which possesses the only flatbed trailer in Kladovo, does not deny that the local police station might have requested in the spring two years ago that the company’s flatbed trailer be dispatched to Tekija to transport the refrigerated truck pulled out of the Danube (Politika, 15 may 2001).
“I was in a big metal boat with a powerful Johnson outboard motor, waiting for a signal from my partner on the Romanian side of the Danube to come over for another load of gasoline. I was about 30 meters from the bank and could hear every sound in the quiet March night. I remember it was about 2:15 a.m. and a moonless night.”
This is how a former gasoline smuggler from Tekija started his story about the refrigerated truck. He asked to remain anonymous until an official inquiry into the case was instituted.
“First I saw some lights. I thought they had come to arrest me. You know how it is when you’re smuggling gas over the Danube, from the Romanian to our bank. I could only see the headlights of a truck. There were another two vehicles, in front and behind. Then I thought it might be some kind of accident. I heard the door of the truck, which was facing the Danube, being opened. Then it was closed. There was a bang and the sound of something falling into the water. I think it took five or six minutes for the truck to sink” (Politika, 14 May 2001).
Najdan Mladenovi?, a retired river captain and fisherman from Tekija, was in his boat just below Trajan’s Tablet, hauling out his nets, when he saw a cargo being carried down the middle of the Danube by the current:
“My wife Mica said, ‘Look, there’s a tent floating in the Danube.” And I said to her, ‘What’s it to you? We’re fishing.’ The truck couldn’t be seen in the water. It looked like a pyramid of some kind. When we got home in the evening, my son Saša said: ‘Dad, they’ve found something on the bank.’
“I’m a captain. I know the Danube and its strength. In the gorges, it can pull anything down to the bottom. But not a refrigerated truck. They are hermetically sealed and there is so much air in them that whoever wanted to sink this one in the Danube and cover up the traces did a very unprofessional job. Had the truck been open, it would have gone straight down to the bottom,” said Mladenovi? (Politika, 15 May 2001).
Commission of inquiry established at request of HLC
Reacting to reports on the finding of a refrigerated truck full of corpses, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) called on the Serbian police, Prosecutor’s Office and all other competent bodies to investigate the case and inform the public of their findings.
Radio B92 reported that the Chief of Public Security on 7 May 2001 established a task force charged with determining the relevant facts and taking the appropriate legal steps on the basis of its findings.
The task force twice interviewed Miroslav Srzendi?, the Negotin District Prosecutor, who confirmed that his Office was notified the same day the truck was being pulled out. The task force also contacted Krsta Majstorovi?, formerly the Negotin District Prosecutor, who, according to some sources, said ?aslav Golubovi?, a former police chief in Bor, ordered that there be no investigation and that the case be considered a state secret.
The task force also spoke in Kladovo with: Mirko Petrovi?, Deputy Municipal Prosecutor; Boško Rajkovi?, criminal investigations technician, Milan Stevanovi?, Head of the Criminal Investigations Division; and Police Chief Vukašin Sperli? (Danas, 17 May 2001).
Serbian Minister of Justice Vladan Bati? called on the President of the Serbian Supreme Court and the acting Public Prosecutor to take all necessary steps to clarify “the mysterious case” of the corpses found in a refrigerated truck sunk in the Danube (B92, 19 May 2001).
The public has not yet been informed of the results of the task force’s inquiries.