Untitled

Podujevo 1999 – Beyond Reasonable Doubtthe way they do it in the police, and then a real psychological maltreatmentbegan. This psychological maltreatment consisted of their telling me to getup, to sit down, and they called me “You pussy!”, and then one of them approachedme, levelled a pistol in my direction, or lit a cigarette for me andthen took it away and threw it down, saying: “Why did you light it?” Thiswent on for about an hour and I had no idea of what it all meant.I asked Slobodan Jovović, one of those inspectors - it was later on that Ilearned he was an inspector and his name - to let my family know whereI was, and I wrote my telephone number for him. He said there were noproblems with it. It was later that I learned that he had not informed myfamily about this. After an hour, four members of the special unit, in battlefatigues, with automatic rifles, grenades, and vests came and they hustledme into a Black Maria and put me behind the driver’s seat and one of themtook a front seat while I was sitting between the remaining two inspectors.At that, they handcuffed me. Zoran Markuš was the commanding officerand is still the commander of the special unit in Novi Sad. They took me tothe Plisa prison in Novi Sad. Markuš and the driver went out of the vehicle,while I, although I had expected to leave the vehicle, stayed in the vehiclefor some time. After a while Markuš was back, the driver was back and weleft the prison perimeter and drove along the streets of Novi Sad. I was familiarwith Novi Sad and I saw that we were leaving Novi Sad and were goingtoward the Zrenjanin road. I then asked Markuš about all this, what washappening, and he told me: “Don’t fret, Saša. We won’t harm you!”Earlier, I had been told they had strict orders not to tell me anything, norwhere they were taking me. A lot of things went through my head then,that they were taking me somewhere to liquidate me, that they were goingto kill me on the way so that, at one moment, I was thinking about releasingthe safety catch of a grenade worn by one of the members of the specialunit so that all of us would be blown up. Once on the Zrenjanin road,we turned and took side roads toward Belgrade. To be precise, we drovealong side roads until Belgrade, then along the highway, and the journeytook quite some time, in fact, until dusk when we arrived in Prokuplje.In Prokuplje, they took me to an elementary school, across the street fromthe Secretariat of the Interior, I don’t know the name of the school whereI was taken into, and into a classroom and was told to take the first desk.271