We have a bit of land here and some roofing, where we raise two goats and fatten a pig... It could have been around seven thirty when me and my Milija drove the straw for the cattle with the motor cultivator. It wasn't until we were spinning that I noticed. First of all, the shoes, but I wasn't sure if they were or not, so I told my husband: stop! Once there, there is something to see: a man, that is a soldier, lay on his back. With a rifle, to rest, between the legs, hands scattered, under the head a little congealed blood. I see: a dead boy. his grieving mother who accompanied him to the army."
That's how Radmila Petrović, a housewife from Paraćin, described the corpse of Aziz Keljmendi, since she and her husband Milija, then a glass factory worker, accidentally found him that morning. on September 3, 1987, while a rather numerous mixed military-militia-civilian pursuit of him
wandered around unsuccessfully for more than three hours.
"POLITICAL INCUBATOR": Five years have passed since the crime in the "Branko Krsmanović" barracks in Paračin, when Aziz Keljmendi killed four and wounded five of his comrades in uniform. At that time, few could have even guessed that they might be a hint of a general calvary that neither Yugoslavia nor its once powerful army would survive.
It is difficult to even assume that the "soul" of an army organism. The political administration was not informed about the crime immediately after it took place. All the more incomprehensible was the behavior of its leaders in relation to animating their information and propaganda apparatus and in relation to informing the public about what actually happened in Paraćin. While the media tried to offer the people some kind of information about the accident, which was hard to imagine could happen in the Army, security officers and other "emperors" in the organizational units of the Army, as well as in the Ministry of Defense itself, in the morning they "massaged" their collectives at the obligatory morning "briefing" about some "action and conjunction of the external and internal enemy".
It wasn't until around noon that the first official announcement "emerged" from the "information incubator" of the Political Administration, in which it was said that "tonight, September 03, at 03,05:XNUMX a.m., soldier Keljmendi Sadika Aziz... killed Simić Srđan from Beograd while sleeping. Đananović Hazima from the village of Kočice SO Vitez, Dudaković Safeta from the village of Orahova SO B. Gradiška and Begić Gorana from Zagreb..." The information announced and the names of five soldiers wounded by Keljmendi's weapons: Ante Jažić, Petar Dekić, Andrej Prešeren, Huso Kovačević and Nedžip Memedović.
THE PLACE OF THE TRAGEDY: The signatory of these lines, thanks first of all to the fact that he worked in the editorial office of a military newspaper and was in uniform, had the privilege compared to his colleagues in civilian clothes to have the old doors of that sad barracks opened for him, despite the fact that he is the chief headquarters of the joint division, a certain bristling colonel scolded his subordinates: "Let the journalists go, nothing in front of them!" It was ordered in the competent place. I had to use force to drive that vermin out of the gate."
And the gate is similar to many barracks gates: "es-em-be", metal, against which the "duty officer" with the application form is necessarily leaning. Since the brick building for the guard was being repaired and whitewashed in those days, the guard was moved to two tents. About thirty steps from the entrance to the barracks, there is a military residential building on the ground floor and first floor. The units were also small in terms of formation, and for other reasons, the entire army could be accommodated in two dormitories in those days: number 41 and 42. The tragedy took place in them, and this applies especially to the latter. Facing them, on the left is the entrance to the first room, on the right to the second room. Between the two entrances was a soška with elaborately arranged infantry weapons and other military trinkets. To the right of the door of room 42, there was a famous metal wardrobe (it was already hidden at that time), which cannot be ignored in the story. Above him was a wall newspaper with one of Tito's famous war photos in the middle. At the other end of the axis of symmetry is a cluster of smiling young faces, and around the photos are clumsily sown phrases about the "flowing revolution" and its distinct and emphatic credo: "No victim must be forgotten!" What irony!
Soldiers belonging to military post 41 slept in room 7518, i.e. forwarded storage unit whose headquarters is stationed in Niš, and in another room lived members of the Paračin military post 5313. From the second room already on September 4, all the beds were taken out, except for the ones on which the soldiers were found by Keljmendi's volleys.
DATA FOR PHOTOROBOTICS: What would a photo-robot spit out if its memory was "fed" with data about a killer as described by those it soldiered with? He was. they say, of short rather than average height (167 cm), thin build (63 kg. as written in the health record); ascetic face, thin pursed lips and small eyes that were constantly escaping somewhere.
From the documents, it could be seen that he was born on January 15, 1967, in the village of Karašici, SO Lipljan, that he was enrolled in studies at the Faculty of Law in Prishtina, and that he was from Prizren, where he lived permanently for some time, that on September 16, 1986, he went to army (VP 5300/24 Leskovac), "ordinary dustman". Having completed basic training with partial success, he was transferred to Paraćin. In the characteristic that was sent after him, and which was probably not looked at by anyone except the security officer, a single sentence was written: something to the effect that Mutan is "closed in himself". Even in his new environment, he was no different, which is to say, he was hidden behind his introversion and solitude. As much as he had the will and sense for company, his tribesmen always argued. favored the Albanians. By all accounts, he bore the distinct stamp of a lesser value complex, largely because of his feeble constitution. The big flaw in this "psychological portrayal" of the killer is that it is layman's. But there are simply no other testimonies about him.
THE MAIN ACT OF THE CRIME: The result of the journalist's search for an answer to the question of how the crime was committed was identical to the result of the official investigation beyond a reasonable doubt. Just as if everything unfolded according to some kind of scenario, so also the statements of those who more or less directly felt the horror of the crime in Paraćin. (Admittedly, the architecture of the testimony would be undermined at the trial of Kelmendi's accomplices a few months after the tragedy.)
Relying on the information that the journalist was able to obtain, it was almost impossible for him to properly reconstruct the situation of the internal service in the barracks on that eerie night between September 2 and 3, 1987. the command books were not characterized by excessive pedantry and precision, as it was impossible to trace who traded fire with whom for duty, who that night for another time of vigil.
Apparently, the events went like this: a little after midnight at all three duty stations in the barracks, the assistants were supposed to take up their duties: at the barrack level Corporal Mate Dodig (and he did); in VP7518 Aziz Keljmendi (and it is); in the second unit Safet Dudaković (not). It is not known why, instead of being on duty, he slept in someone else's bed, where he died. The fire service in both units is also lost track of at that critical time. However, there was a "regular shift" at both guard posts: Abdjemil Alimani at the first, Enver Beljulja at the second. The commander of the guard, corporal Riza Alibašić, was resting in his tent, the rest of the guard in his, and Goran Kegelj was watching over them, it turns out, not very conscientiously. The rest of the army fell asleep and Aziz Kelmendi went on a vampire feast. In a very abbreviated
version, we recount announcement no. 2 Political administrations.
The information about when Keljmendi opened that small metal cabinet, where the ammunition for the couriers was normally kept, and the way he did it, the killer took to his death. The accepted version is that he did it with a shotgun, somewhere around one o'clock in the morning, and that he took 10 7,62 mm bullets from it. He loaded his rifle, went down to the tent where the commander of the guard was hiding, of course, unnoticed, he forced Riza Alibasic to give him two frames with 30 bullets each and under the threat that he would pay with his head for every reckless move, he ordered the corporal to go in front of the barrel of the rifle towards bedrooms. Going up to the floor of the residential building, the statement says, he quietly asked Alibašić where Safet Dudaković was sleeping. He ordered Corporal Alibašić to move away, and he entered the first dormitory. i.e. to dormitory no. 42. "Finding soldier Dudaković sleeping, he opened fire and killed him, and then fired a burst at the other soldiers, killing Srđan Sirnic and
HONOR OR DISASTER: From the funeral of Goran Begić and wounding two soldiers. Immediately afterwards, he entered the next dormitory and randomly fired bursts, where he killed Hazim Dananović and wounded three soldiers..."
In the general commotion, and under cover of night, Kelmendi escaped from the barracks. His corpse was found about a kilometer and a half from the scene of the crime, and experts have unequivocally established that Aziz Keljmendi ended his own life.
MEDIA PARADIGM: After the first more complete news about the crime and the first official announcements, commentators appeared in the media. Official military and state policy strongly recommended Tanjug's commentary and the "Rilinda" commentary as a media paradigm whose essence was summed up in the headline that Kelmendi shot the Army as a metaphor for Yugoslavia. Afterwards, that title will be used to the point of distaste, and the entire media and other informative and propaganda offensive in the wide south-east (with the exception of Slovenia) started on the dead Keljmendi as the personification of Albanian nationalism and separatism. It was also the line of least resistance, and it suited the lazy spirit and the anti-Albanian mood, which means that it was not a worthwhile effort to unequivocally reveal the true motive of Keljmendi's deadly reaching for weapons. Subsequently, they looked for (and found) supporting holders of the thesis that Keljmendi, well,
consciously sacrificed his life in the interests of the Albanian nation. So it was "discovered" that even before joining the army, he advocated and defended the idea of "Kosovo Republic"; that his brothers wrote "passwords of hostile content" to him, and that his father, then a guest worker, on the very day of the accident, drove his own car in front of the barracks "ostensibly to visit his son, and his intention was
transparent: to pick it up and take it across the border".
Although the investigation started in that direction, and in January 1988 the trial of Keljmendi's accomplices in the crime, even today it is still not known for sure whether Keljmendi really pulled the trigger as a romantic of Albanian nationalism, or as a mind-bender, or as a banal actor of mass murder. The panel of five of the Military Court in Niš could not ignore some facts, such as, for example, the fact that Keljmendi came into conflict with Safet Dudaković on two occasions. True, for some banal reasons, but Keljmendi killed him first! Of the four killed and five wounded, Safeta was the only one who sought among the sleeping soldiers. Why? Why did he continue his bloody rampage after the first and deliberately chosen victim?
The trial was closed to the public and little was known about its course. Admittedly, the whole time the process lasted, which lasted two-thirds of January and the first week of February
In 1988, announcements were regularly offered to the public. But only what would pass through the dense sieve of Vuk Obradović.
Without thinking of denigrating military justice, the verdict could in principle be predicted from the moment the trial began. Eight defendants, all Albanians and one Muslim, were convicted as accomplices
crime, to heavy prison sentences of 2 to 15 years. Of course, with the same ideological foundations as Kelmendi, which cemented him as a "hero" on the pedestal of nationalism.
KELMENDI HAD TO HAPPEN: The political administration, as already mentioned, kept the public in suspense for half a day, especially parents whose children were serving military service, and the Paračina tragedy already started spinning on the flywheel of rumors on September 3. But it was because the official information was leaked. The administration successively launched theses about how the Army, primarily its command apparatus and officer corps, is not to blame for what happened in the "Branko Krsmanović" barracks. One of those theses stated that "the reaction of the guards in the barracks could have been different, but bloodshed could not have been avoided in any variant", because "the crime was planned, and the killer was determined to carry it out". The then Federal Secretary for National Defense, Admiral Mamula, repeated the pathetic question in his numerous tirades: "How many more Kelmendi are there in our units?"
No one, I guess, could have offered him an answer more receptive to the vanity and interests of the military establishment than Serbian President Slobodan Milošević.
He masterfully rode on that wave of "attacks on the Army", just as he rode on the Slovenian one ("Nova revija", "Mladina", "Janša i drovovi", etc.), and in this way saddled the gullible and not especially the intelligent leading generals, who both supported Milošević's populism and the disastrous nationalist frenzy in Serbia.
And anyone who believed in the power of the Army and the perfection of its organization, and who wanted to open their eyes, had to remain worried and stunned in front of such a mess in the Paracin barracks: not a single lever of the internal service was functioning properly; the ammunition was kept in some cupboard there, which was opened with a blow of the fist. and the soldiers changed their service on their own.
There was also Albanian nationalism in the Army, as if it wasn't there. It is very certain that Keljmendi was also soaked with it. But, nationalism. according to our deep conviction, he was not decisive in the Paračina tragedy. Kelmendi simply had to happen, regardless of whether it was in Paraćin or in another garrison, as an expression of the decadence of the army and the system it served.
The Paračin accident was the beginning of the end of a once truly powerful army. Today, few people even remember that crime, which could hardly be called that anymore compared to the terrible beasts that have been happening to us for a year and a half and there is no end in sight. ■
