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Historical and Investigative Research - 2 Dec 2005;
by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer6.htm

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In Part 5 we saw that Zivadin Djordjevic, the diver who was initially the only cited source for the freezer truck allegations, but always the main one, said that he had been misquoted. Why? That's what we will answer here.

After the NATO bombing, NATO spent a considerable amount of money installing a new government in Belgrade.[0] As we have seen, the explosion of the freezer-truck story coincided with NATO demands that the new government in Belgrade hand Slobodan Milosevic over to the Hague Tribunal. Given this context, it is not so surprising that the tiny crime magazine in Serbia where the allegations began -- Timocka Krimi Revija (Timocka Crime Review) -- should not be an innocent little magazine, after all.

This became clear in an article written by The Ottawa Citizen, dated August 25, 2001, and which introduces the issue as follows:

“…among ordinary Serbs, Mr. Milosevic’s coverup has worked….Most Serbs chose to believe that their war in Kosovo had been an heroic struggle against Albanian terrorists and Nato aggressors…

…the nascent democratic government had little interest in revealing Serbia’s dirty hands…It was weak and beset by problems…”[1]

Notice how The Ottawa Citizen begins by giving us the official story. Milosevic is Media Milosevic, the cartoon monster,[1a] and the Serbian public, we are told, had been duped by his alleged “cover-up.” The NATO-installed government in Belgrade is, by contrast, “the nascent democratic government.” This government was supposedly reluctant to tell the Serbs the supposedly horrible truth because it was “weak and beset by problems.”

But now, pay close attention to what The Ottawa Citizen says next:

“Yet paradoxically, members of the new government realized that if they took the gamble of a slow disclosure of Serb war crimes, they could prepare public opinion for Mr. Milosevic’s extradition, an act that would release millions of dollars in foreign investment, and undermine the power of the old guard. So they hatched a revelation plan. And the silent diver, Zivadin Djordjevic, was the fall guy.” (emphasis mine)

How interesting. Zivadin Djordjevic became “the fall guy” for a “revelation plan” that the “new government [in Belgrade]...hatched” in order (a) to get “millions of dollars in foreign investment,” and (b) to “undermine the power of the old guard” (i.e. people opposed to NATO control of Serbia). Why is this so interesting? Because Zivadin Djordjevic happens to be the diver presented as the main source for the freezer-truck allegations and who later claimed that he had been misquoted by Timocka Krimi Revija, the tiny magazine where the freezer-truck allegations originated. So was Timocka a conscious tool in this “revelation plan” that the “new government [in Belgrade] ... hatched”?

Just look at what The Ottawa Citizen says next:

“He [Zivadin Djordjevic] was approached last December by Dragan Vitomirovic, owner and editor of the Timocka Krimi Revija newspaper in Zajecar. Mr. Vitomirovic explained that he was doing a story on the Danube’s most experienced divers and wanted to interview him. Mr. Djordjevic agreed.

The interview went normally until Mr. Vitomirovic asked the diver what he had discovered on April 6, 1999. Mr. Djordjevic refused to talk. Then Mr. Vitomirovic produced his identity card for the “DB,” Drzavna Bezbednost, Serbia’s state security service. Reluctantly, the diver told his tale.”

Mr. Vitomirovic, whom Belgrade sources claim is a friend of Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic, himself a former DB officer, ran the story of the dumped truck on May 1, weeks before Mr. Milosevic’s extradition.

…the Interior Minister set up an investigation into the incident, placing Capt. Karleusa at its head.” (emphasis mine)

Matters are clearing up.

Dragan Vitomirovic, “owner and editor of the Timocka Krimi Revija newspaper in Zajecar,” which “ran the story of the dumped truck” and in so doing originated the freezer-truck allegations, was a former member of Serbia's state security service. He was also friends with Dusan Mihajlovic, also formerly with the state security service, and now Interior minister in the “new [i.e. NATO-installed] government.” Since Vitomorivic's interview with diver Zivadin Djordjevic was part of the new government's “revelation plan,” the Timocka article on the “dumped truck” was hardly an act of independent journalism. What happened is that Mihajlovic sent Vitomirovic to produce this article.

Since Vitomirovic is both owner and editor of Timocka Krimi Revija, he is utterly unfettered and may print anything that Mihajlovic wants him to. This, of course, is why Timocka attributed statements to Zivadin Djordjevic which the diver never made, and which caused Djordjevic to complain, as we have seen, that he had been misquoted (see Part 5).[2]

Let us now take a closer look at what Vitomirovic did through his little magazine, Timocka Crime Review.

What Dragan Vitomirovic did with his magazine
______________________________________________

Vitomirovic actually published at least two articles in his Timocka magazine about an abandoned freezer truck full of dead bodies: the “dumped truck.” I will examine each of these stories in detail, but first I want to make some comments about the key differences between the two articles, and about the political importance of those differences.

In the first article, which appeared on September 15 1999, Vitomirovic did not mention Albanians at all. Instead the story spoke about rumors concerning a truck that had perhaps contained dead Kurds.

In the second story, dated May 1 2001, changes were introduced, and the most important among them was that the supposed Kurds became supposed Albanians. It was this second article that became the source of the allegations against the government of Slobodan Milosevic. 

Vitomirovic wrote, in the first article, that the freezer truck had been found tipped on its side, with corpses falling out of the back door. It had apparently rolled onto the bank of the river Danube but not into it. Its license plates were not from Kosovo; they were Swiss. The police came, shooed people away, used a crane, reloaded the corpses onto the truck, and apparently sent the truck on its way to the town of Tekija.

So it seems this truck was never actually fished from the Danube, and therefore required no police divers. In fact, it was simply driven away. This easily explains why this article never mentioned diver Zivadin Djordjevic.

[ HIR NOTE: We have posted the September 1999 Timocka article in English translation here:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/timocka.htm

The English in places is a bit awkward because the translation from Serbo-Croatian is not perfect. ]

An article in the London Sunday Times refers to this first article when it writes that:

“His [Dragan Vitomirovic’s] magazine, Timocka Kriminala Revija, originally listed the incident in June 1999, describing the victims as Kurds trying to flee to the West. He then discovered the truth about the bodies and three months later wrote a second version.”[3] (my emphasis)

The Times got the date wrong. But it hit the bull’s-eye with what mattered: Vitomirovic supposedly ‘discovered’ that the bodies which had earlier been reported as belonging to Kurds, supposedly belonged to massacred Albanians. And then Vitomirovic ‘corrected’ his claims in a second article.

In due course I will examine Vitomirovic’s second version -- of great importance since it is from this article that the allegations of supposed Serbian atrocities against Albanians emanate. But first I shall delve further into the details of Vitomirovic’s first, September 1999, story.

It is quite interesting that, in this first story, the bodies in the truck were said to be Kurds being smuggled across from the Romanian border. Why so interesting? Because Dragan Vitomirovic, who is owner and editor of Timocka Krimi Revija, and who published this story, turns out to have a brother by the name Slobodan Vitomirovic. You’ll never guess how this brother earns his keep: by smuggling illegal aliens (including Kurds) in trucks along the Romanian border.

Coincidence? Read on to find out.

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