Josip Begovic Nacional last week gained insight into documentation which indicates that leads pointing to the so-called Scotch tape case and the perpetrators of the murders in Osijek of several dozen Serbian civilians in 1991 and 1992 were known to the Government of Ivica Racan in 2001 and 2002. By then Josip Begovic, the chief of the Osijek-Baranja police department at the time, had already in his investigation uncovered the existence of the so-called "killer platoon" within the mysterious Independent Uskok Company, and had begun to shed light on the role of the company's commander Ivica Krnjak, and that of Gordana Getos-Magdic, whose repentant statement to the police on the murders of Osijek Serbs is the most incriminating evidence facing Branimir Glavas.

Although rumours were circulating in wartime Osijek of secret lists of Osijek Serbs that were to be liquidated, and new corpses were found every week on the banks of the Drava River, there had been for ten years no desire to investigate these murders, and the situation changed only in March of 2000 when Dubravko Jezercic, Glavas's best man, was relieved of his duties as chief of the Osijek-Baranja police department.

Appointed to the position vacated by Jezercic was Josip Begovic, the one-time chief of the police station in the Tresnjevka area of Zagreb and until then the spokesperson of the Zagreb Police Department. And while the past few months have created the impression in the Croatian public that Vladimir Faber, named to the post of chief of the Osijek-Baranja police department in May of last year, was most to thank for the investigation of war crimes in Osijek, the documents Nacional has uncovered indicate that it was in fact Begovic who, in January of 2001, decided to launch an investigation into the ten-year-old murders. The only thing his associates had to go on at the time were the findings of the autopsies and reports filed on a dozen Serbian civilians, of which some were still unidentified, although some of the victims had been identified: Alija Sabanovic, Milutin Kutlic, Bogdan Pocuca, Jovica Grubic, Petar Ladnjuk and Milenko Stanar.

The investigation launched by chief Begovic soon began to yield information that by February of 2001 already had police investigators looking into the role that had been played by Gordana Getos-Magdic in the 1991 murders. Chief Begovic gave his associates the order to widen the investigation and to try to uncover as much as possible about her role in the wartime events, but only a few months later, in May of 2001, Begovic left the post of police chief, having been appointed assistant justice minister, his deputy Marijan Ivic filling the vacated post. Ivic, as acting chief of police, continued the investigation launched by his superior officer: a group of police investigators continued to work on the so-called "Scotch tape murders" and dozens of Osijek citizens were questioned in the investigation, from former members of the Croatian Army, the relatives of the killed, right up to Army cooks. A great deal of information was uncovered. Documents the police and State Attorney's Office have in their possession indicate that the victims of the murders on the Osijek banks of the Drava River were not "Serbian snipers", "infiltrators" or "spies", but rather that many of the city's inhabitants at the time came to harm only because they were of Serbian nationality, and some of them – by mistake. An example of that is Bogdan Pocuca, the brother of Osijek's former Communist party chief Janko Pocuca. In the wake of rumours that he was on a secret liquidation list and on the "advice" of some people to leave town, Janko Pocuca in the autumn of 1991 left Osijek in secret and moved to Porec.

His brother Bogdan, however, who had nothing to do with politics and worked as a printmaker in the local Stampa Company, the publisher of the Glas Slavonije newspaper, remained in Osijek and in December moved into his brother Janko's house, who had already left for Porec. Uniformed soldiers came for him one day at the end of December and on 7 January 1992 the corpse of Bogdan Pocuca was found on the banks of the Drava River.

At the end of 2001 Ivic's investigators uncovered the first, scant, leads on the so-called Independent Uskok Company's "killer platoon", and in mid January of 2002 a witness for the first time confirmed, before police investigators, the existence of the killer platoon, saying that the members of that, the 4^th platoon of the Independent Uskok Company, had been located in Osijek's Kersovanijeva Street, and mentioned that Glavas had personally coordinated some of the actions carried out by Krnjak and his soldiers. These leads widened the investigation of Gordana Getos-Magdic, and she too was soon afterwards called in for questioning.

In the meantime, however, Chief Ivic was relieved of his duties, and Vlado Tulicic, a man close to Glavas, assumed his post. He was dismissed in April of last year for his open political involvement in Glavas' campaign, after which Vladimir Faber took over the helm of the Osijek police. He continued what had been initiated by some of his predecessors and, based on the gathered evidence, filed charges that have made the near futures of Glavas, Ivica Krnjak, Gordana Getos-Magdic and other suspects still quite uncertain.

The leads gathered by police investigators during the mandate of Josip Begovic have only over the past year been used by the current chief of the Osijek-Baranja Police Department in filing criminal charges that have served the State Attorney's Office as the basis of the so-called "Scotch tape case", that is to say, in filing criminal charges in connection with the murders, wounding and torture of Osijek civilians of Serbian nationality against Branimir Glavas, Ivica Krnjak, Dino Kontic, Tihomir Valentic, Zdravko Dragic and Gordana Getos-Magdic. Cited in the charges as victims of the murders are Branko Lovric, Milutin Kutlic, Alija Sabanovic, Bogdan Pocuca, Jovica Grubic, Petar Ladnjuk, Milenko Stanar and several to date unidentified victims who were killed or disappeared in Osijek in 1991 and 1992. Although there were between 66 and 118 unexplained murders or disappearances of Serbian civilians in wartime Osijek, the allegations of criminal charges sent to the County State Attorney's Office on 20 October 2006 by the Osijek-Baranja Police Department, headed by police chief Vladimir Faber, indicate that Branimir Glavas and a handful of members of the so-called Independent Uskok Company are accused only of a dozen cases that have a clear common pattern, a pattern that has seen the killings dubbed the "Scotch tape murders". There were many murders from the summer of 1991 to the autumn of 1992, but even then the attention of many had been caught by the gripping pattern whereby a citizen of Osijek of Serbian nationality would mysteriously disappear or in which uniformed persons, at the time unknown, would take them away for questioning, the corpses of these civilians to be found a few days later by chance passers-by on the banks of the Drava River downstream of the Osijek Fortress. Similar marks were found on the bodies of all of the victims: their hands were bound by wide brown Scotch tape; their mouths were also taped shut. Signs of physical abuse were also visible on the bodies of most of the victims, and they were killed by a gunshot to the head.

From the documentation available to the police and State Attorney's Office it is evident that Radoslav Ratkovic is key inIvica Krnjak understanding the so-called "Scotch tape murders". A former employee of the Osijek hospital who was himself to have been murdered, he survived both a shot to the head and being thrown into the Drava River, only to witness, a few hours later, the liquidation of Osijek physician Dr. Milutin Kutlic. Ratkovic, who survived the attempt on his life of 7 December 1991, was taken from his relatives by three uniformed men to an unknown location. He revealed what had happened to him that night several years later: "They took me to the basement of a building in the yard of Dubrovacka Street no. 30 and beat me for several hours demanding that I give up the names of the Chetniks I was collaborating with. I had nothing to confess so around 8 pm they took me to the Drava River by way of the Fortress. One of them shot me in the left cheek and pushed me into the river with his foot. The bullet passed through my tongue and right jaw, but did not kill me.

I surfaced and he pointed a flashlight at me and shot again, hitting me in the mouth. The bullet passed through almost the same spot." After the executors had left, Ratkovic dragged himself out onto the Drava River embankment. He then, unnoticed, saw them kill another victim who he recognised as Doctor Milutin Kutlic, a man he worked with at the hospital. He was found a while later and saved by Croatian soldiers who transferred him to the Osijek hospital. He later moved to Vojvodina and up to 2001 no one knew of his case. In the meantime the corpses of Osijek citizens floated on the Drava River. Documentation gathered by Josip Begovic's investigators cite that on 8 December 1991 two male corpses were found on the right banks of the Drava River downstream of the Fortress.

Both had haematomas on their heads, probably the result of beating, and both were killed in the same fashion – by a bullet to the head. One of the corpses remained unidentified, and of the other it was established that it was the body of Osijek hospital physician Milutin Kutlic. Another corpse was found on 27 December 1991 near the railway bridge spanning the Drava River that showed signs of brutal torture: an autopsy revealed numerous haematomas on the entire body, double fractures of all ribs, and fractures of both shinbones. A fingerprint analysis established that the victim of unknown perpetrators was Milenko Stanar.

The gruesome murders continued into 1992 and on 7 February the Drava washed the body of 45-year-old Alija Sabanovic onto its banks, killed by four bullets to the head. Branko Lovric, the one-time head of the Osijek Postal & Telecommunication Company was taken from his house on Sisačka Street no. 11 on 25 November 1991. A witness, who lived in the house as a subtenant, saw three uniformed men and a blonde woman ringing Lovric's doorbell. They called him in for questioning, saying that he would be back home in half an hour, but Lovric never returned and his remains have never been found. It was only discovered from the criminal charges filed with the State Attorney's Office at the end of October of this year by the Osijek-Baranja Police Department who had carried out the murder of Lovric: the three men were Zdravko Dragic, Tihomir Valentic and Stjepan Bekavac, and the mysterious blonde was Gordana Getos-Magdic, whose repentant statement to the police is at this moment the most incriminating of Branimir Glavas. And in the uncertain legal proceedings against him it may come to light that there was also indecision on the part of the SDP government of the time in exposing and solving the Glavas case.

email to:Plamenko Cvitic