Detained Journalist Makes Daring Escape

A Croatian journalist detained in April by the Yugoslav army and imprisoned in Montenegro on espionage charges has managed what one newspaper here called a “spectacular” escape and is believed to have slipped back into his own country.

Yugoslav army authorities released a statement, published Wednesday in the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti confirming that Antun Masle of the Croatian weekly Globus disappeared early Monday after being taken to a hospital for treatment. The army charged that collaborators among the Montenegrin police or prison guards helped him escape.

Masle was first taken to the hospital Sunday evening after complaining of heart trouble, was examined and returned to prison. He was taken back to the hospital after midnight when he complained of severe abdominal pain, Montenegrin media reported.

During his second visit, hospital aides wanted to move Masle to another section for further tests, but “the moment they left the emergency room, the patient jumped off his wheelchair and ran away, to the great surprise of the technicians who escorted him,” another Montenegrin daily newspaper, Dan, reported Wednesday.

Several of Masle’s acquaintances said Wednesday that he had returned to Croatia.

Montenegro is the smaller of Yugoslavia’s two republics and has a pro-Western government. Since mid-April, the Yugoslav army has attempted to block entry into Montenegro to any foreigner without a visa issued by Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia and Serbia, the larger republic. The army frequently has detained reporters when they ventured too close to military facilities.

Colleagues in Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, believe that Masle was arrested April 20 because his reporting about military issues in Montenegro had angered the army. At the time, Masle’s attorney said the reporter could face at least 10 years in prison because he was charged with “disseminating military secrets.”

The Montenegrin government, for its part, has welcomed foreign reporters throughout the war between Yugoslavia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It has granted journalists entry without visas and has sought to protect them from the army, even providing some correspondents with police escorts for risky assignments such as visits near the border with Kosovo, a province of Serbia. The Montenegrin government also has lobbied for the release of reporters who were detained.

The detentions have ranged in length from a few hours to several weeks. With Masle’s escape, all foreign correspondents once held by the army in Montenegro are free.

In its statement, the army charged that authorities at Spuz Prison, near Podgorica, made several procedural “mistakes” in their decision to take the “supposedly badly ill Masle” to the hospital. Masle was accompanied by “members of the prison’s security and Interior Ministry police,” and among them “probably several persons . . . were accomplices in this action, which was well organized,” the army said.

According to the account carried by Dan, Masle’s escape at the hospital came after one of the prison guards stepped away for a moment.

Montenegrin Justice Minister Dragan Soc denied that prison authorities or the police had sprung Masle. “These are stories based on nothing,” he said.