Lawsuit exhumes ugly past

A DEFAMATION hearing is shaping as a de facto Balkans war crimes trial.

DRAGAN Vasiljkovic does not cut an imposing figure. He is slight, standing 175cm, and looks older than his 54 years. But according to several witnesses who encountered Vasiljkovic during the conflict in the Balkans in the early 1990s, this small, wiry man with the ready smile is a brutal criminal who committed wartime acts of unimaginable horror.

During the past two weeks, the NSW Supreme Court has heard testimonies outlining how the Serbian-born, Australian-reared former soldier allegedly bashed, raped and tortured non-Serbs, and boasted of murdering them during the bloody war across the states of the former Yugoslavia. Vasiljkovic has denied the claims, which came to light in September 2005 when The Australian published an article detailing his alleged activities while a commander of a Serbian paramilitary unit during the Balkan wars, when he was known as Captain Dragan.

While the claims have never been tested by a war crimes tribunal, the shocking details of his alleged grotesque misdeeds on battlegrounds half a world away have been aired in the NSW Supreme Court as part of a defamation hearing brought by Vasiljkovic against Nationwide News (publisher of The Weekend Australian).

Vasiljkovic, who has not been charged in relation to any war crimes, may yet face an international crimes tribunal. The Australian Federal Court has ordered that he be extradited to Croatia, where he is wanted for questioning in relation to alleged war crimes.

However, as the former soldier's appeal against the extradition order won't be heard until the conclusion of the defamation hearing - and as Nationwide News is defending the truth of its article - the NSW Supreme Court is, in effect, sitting as a de facto war crimes tribunal.

It is the first time a NSW defamation trial has been asked to determine whether a person was a war criminal.

In July 2007, a jury in NSW found the September 2005 article in The Australian contained a number of meanings that were defamatory of Vasiljkovic, including that he condoned the rape of women and girls, was a mercenary and a "death squad" commander.

Other defamatory imputations included that he committed a massacre during the Balkans conflict, he was a criminal before 1991 and had underworld links before 1991.

The former soldier admits leaving Australia in 1991 and travelling to his homeland to lead a paramilitary Serb unit in Croatia.

He has been supported in court by several members of the Serbian community during the past fortnight. Nada Lukich-Bruce, whose father fought alongside Vasiljkovic in the Balkans, described him in court as a "Serbian hero".

The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia, Bishop Irinej Dobrijevic, told the court that the accused war criminal was "an honest humanitarian" and said there was a lack of evidence to support the serious allegations against him.

Vasiljkovic smiled and nodded through the testimonies of his character witnesses, but he took on a more serious expression on Wednesday when a woman who accused him of raping her gave evidence.

The 55-year-old mother of two - referred to only as Source A, for legal reasons - told the court how she was raped "five or six times" by a man she knew as Captain Dragan, and recalled how on one occasion he had also ordered soldiers under his command to gang-rape her.

The woman, a Bosnian Muslim, described through an interpreter how she and her husband were taken from their flat in Zvornik, Bosnia.

After about 10 days, female prisoners were transferred from the school to a factory occupied by Serb forces. There, guards picked certain women to be taken to the nearby Vidikovac Motel where they were bashed and raped by soldiers, the court heard.

The witness recalled that one night in June 1992, she was taken to a hotel room by two Serb soldiers. "They said to me that I had to wait for some prince. That the prince will arrive."

The woman recalled that moments later, "Captain Dragan" - whom she did not know - entered the room.

"He ordered me to take my clothes off and said to me that I have good breasts," the woman said.

"And then he did what he wanted to do. He raped me."

Later she was told by two Serb guards that she should "feel honoured for being chosen by a real prince - Captain Dragan".

She told the hearing that on a later occasion, Vasiljkovic entered the room with a knife in his hand and blood on his clothes.

From the window of the hotel room she said she could see "bodies floating in the lake".

She said Vasiljkovic then told her that she would be raped by other soldiers.

"He said that he could not do anything that night with me but that his friends would do it," she said. "As much as I'm aware, maybe three or four men were raping me, but after that I went unconscious and I don't know how many."

Another witness, former Croatian policeman Velibor Bracic, told the court how he was kicked in the face by Vasiljkovic while at Knin fortress, a prisoner of war camp in Croatia, in 1991. Bracic also described how Serb guards, many of whom wore red berets with Serb insignia, took prisoners away from their cells for "mock executions". He said the guards would put their guns in prisoners' mouths, with a finger on the trigger.

Inmates were also given electric shocks and were sexually assaulted, Bracic claimed.

English journalist Anne McElvoy, who interviewed Vasiljkovic at the Knin fortress in July 1991, told the court how the accused war criminal spoke of the conflict.

In an article dated July 15, 1991, published in The Times, McElvoy quoted Vasiljkovic as saying, "I am not here to kill people, just to neutralise the enemy. When the Croatian side uses hospitals or police stations and the villages as fortified positions, I'm sorry, I just have to massacre them."

Vasiljkovic has been in custody in Sydney since his arrest in January 2006. He is due to give evidence on Tuesday. The defamation hearing is expected to last another two weeks.