Cut Aid to Bosnia Town, Activists Urge

International donors have pumped more than $3 million in reconstruction aid into a Bosnian Serb town run by a rogues’ gallery of suspected war criminals, conferring a semblance of respectability on town leaders and undercutting investigations by the U.N. war crimes tribunal, a watchdog group says.

In a 70-page report, Human Rights Watch says the mayor, deputy mayor, police chief, hospital director and director of a local organization claiming to be the Red Cross were all deeply implicated in “ethnic cleansing” in Prijedor, a town in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Although none of the five has been indicted for war crimes, most are under investigation by the tribunal and all have been cited in United Nations reports on wartime atrocities.

The report says the municipal officials “got away with their crimes and became rich men in the process, having expropriated businesses, homes and other assets of the non-Serbs of the community, estimated to be worth several billion” German marks.

“The architects of ethnic cleansing . . . interact daily with representatives of international organizations,” the report says. “This contact grants them a wholly undeserved legitimacy, given that they achieved their positions by ‘disappearing’ the duly elected mayor of the town, Muhamed Cehajic, believed killed on July 26, 1992, and thousands of other [non-Serbian] community leaders and citizens.”

Human Rights Watch has called on international organizations, especially aid groups, to break off contact with Prijedor officials and end assistance programs unless there is a guarantee that none of the money will find its way into the pockets of the town leaders, a condition that the report says is unlikely to be met.

“The international community has squandered much of the leverage available to enforce compliance with the Dayton [Ohio] peace agreement, especially by lifting sanctions against Republika Srpska [the Bosnian Serb entity],” the report says. “Therefore, the strategic use of reconstruction aid in ensuring compliance has become all the more important.”

The report says millions of dollars in aid have been invested in Prijedor since the signing of the Dayton accord. Much of the money was skimmed by town authorities through methods such as direct pressure on aid-givers to do business with companies controlled by the municipal leaders, according to Human Rights Watch. Although no precise figures are contained in the report, sources said that aid spending in Prijedor has totaled at least $3 million.

Acknowledging that the war crimes tribunal has not charged any of the leaders, Human Rights Watch says: “While it is important to presume innocence in a legal sense, neither indictment nor conviction [is] required . . . to exercise good judgment in distribution of reconstruction aid. . . . There is no requirement in the meantime that aid agencies do business with persons under suspicion of war crimes.”

The report contains detailed profiles of the town leaders, outlining the evidence of their participation in atrocities:

* Milomir Stakic, the mayor, was accused by the U.N. Commission of Experts on Bosnian war crimes of direct involvement in establishment of concentration camps near the town. He resigned in 1993 but was reinstated by Radovan Karadzic, then president of the Bosnian Serbs and now under indictment for war crimes.

* Momcilo Radanovic, the deputy mayor, was accused by the U.N. commission of leading a brigade that committed numerous massacres and was heavily involved in extortion of money from non-Serbian civilians.

* Srdjo Srdic, president of a group that calls itself the Red Cross, although it has no sanction from other Red Cross organizations, was accused by the U.N. commission of being “personally responsible for plunder and physical and psychological terror. . . . He made the false pretense that the Red Cross was helping prisoners in the concentration camps. He has also been accused of having organized ethnic cleansing by using Red Cross vehicles.”

* Milan Kovacevic, director of the Prijedor hospital, has been accused of organizing the shipment of non-Serbs to concentration camps.

* Ranko Mijic, the acting police chief, has been accused by former prisoners of being chief interrogator for all concentration camps in the Prijedor area.