Serb General Indicted by U.N. Tribunal

A Bosnian Serb general whose mysterious arrest here four weeks ago knocked the Bosnian peace process into a tailspin was indicted Friday on war crimes charges by a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands.

The surprise indictment of Gen. Djordje Djukic, initially considered a likely witness rather than a suspect, is expected to enrage Bosnian Serb authorities, who temporarily broke off contacts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after Djukic was hauled off to The Hague in a NATO warplane.

“Based on what happened earlier, it is something we are all sweating,” one Western diplomat said of the anticipated Bosnian Serb response to the indictment, which came just as relations with NATO were being restored.

There was no official reaction Friday by Bosnian Serb authorities in Pale, their headquarters near Sarajevo. Bosnian government-controlled television mentioned the indictment only briefly, saying it culminated a “monthlong farce” by the U.N. tribunal.

Since his arrest Jan. 30, Djukic has been a symbol across Bosnian Serb territory of the deeply held belief that the world has ganged up on Serbs. His unusual detention and extradition--until Friday he had not been charged with a crime--have seriously eroded Bosnian Serb confidence in the evenhandedness of the NATO peace implementation force, known as IFOR, and the U.N. tribunal, charged with bringing war criminals on all sides of the Balkan conflict to justice.

In dozens of interviews with residents fleeing the Serb-populated suburbs of Sarajevo over the past two weeks, Djukic’s detention was cited most often as grounds for distrust and fear--and, in the end, for the determination to abandon life in the Bosnian capital.

“The best thing is they just arrest all of us and take us up there [to The Hague],” said Predraga Pandurovic, a Pale shopkeeper. “According to the world, all of us are war criminals, from the smallest child to the oldest person.”

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The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia alleges in its indictment that Djukic assisted in the shelling of civilian targets in the Bosnian capital for more than three years. The accusation, court officials said, is based on Djukic’s role as head of logistics for Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, already indicted on various war crimes charges.

Djukic is the 53rd war crimes suspect to be indicted, but he is only the second to be jailed. Although tribunal sources refused to discuss details surrounding the indictment, there were indications that it came after attempts at striking a plea-bargain collapsed.

The sources said Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone decided to charge Djukic after it became clear that the officer was unwilling to cooperate with the tribunal or strike any deals.

Because Djukic was barely known to the tribunal before he was picked up, he would not seem to be at the top of the prosecutors’ most-wanted list. But his rank would likely have given him access to information that could be used against more prominent figures under indictment, including Mladic and Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic.

“We’re looking at them as potential witnesses for all sorts of things they could talk about,” Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt said earlier this week, referring to Djukic and Col. Aleksa Krsmanovic, a second Bosnian Serb officer arrested with the general.

Toma Fila, an attorney representing Djukic, said on independent Serbian radio B-92 that prosecutors “manipulated the court” by presenting Djukic as a potential witness when in fact he was only a suspect.

The Djukic case has been steeped in mystery ever since his driver went directly to a Bosnian government checkpoint on a major Sarajevo thoroughfare. Bosnian Serb officials said the driver made a wrong turn en route to a meeting with NATO officials and that NATO troops stood by as the general was kidnapped by Bosnian police.

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But NATO officials said there was no meeting scheduled with Djukic. Furthermore, the general was wearing civilian clothes, was driving in the opposite direction of NATO headquarters and had plain view of the Bosnian police checkpoint 200 yards before his capture, they said.

“The circumstances surrounding this arrest are suspicious enough to question what the hell he was trying to do,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Walker, who commands NATO ground forces in Bosnia. “You cannot tell me that a Serbian general gets lost in Sarajevo after 4 1/2 years of war.”

NATO sources said there are suspicions that Djukic, as logistics commander, was aware of lucrative dealings between the Bosnian Serb army and the enemy Bosnian Croat army, most likely for the sale of desperately needed fuel from Croatia.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Brussels contributed to this report.