Trail of blood

Kandic said the document her group received by mail Monday was also sent to several other high officials in the new Yugoslav government, but that for some reason she was the first one to reveal its contents. The implication that the new Yugoslav leadership, including Kostunica, sat on the document has led to speculation here that Kostunica may have reasons not to fire Markovic.

The timing of the document's leak coincides with demands by some members of the 18-member Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), which unseated Milosevic last month, that Markovic resign or be fired.

Opposition leader Nebojsa Covic, a former mayor of Belgrade considered well-informed about the Milosevic regime, told a news conference Tuesday that the DOS would suspend its participation in the Serbian government until Markovic is removed. The opposition party headed by Vuk Draskovic, who has repeatedly claimed that four close associates killed in a suspicious car wreck last year were victims of the SDB, has also demanded that Markovic be fired.

Kandic vowed Wednesday that the leaked document would do more than get Markovic fired. "On Tuesday at 2 p.m., we filed criminal charges at the public prosecutor's office on the grounds that there is compelling evidence the highest officials of the state security agency were directly involved in the premeditated murder of Slavko Curuvija," Kandic said. "Markovic's resignation goes without saying."

But demands for Markovic's ouster or arrest may plunge Serbia into a crisis. Bozidar Prelevic, a judge fired by Milosevic two years ago, recently became one of three people appointed to head the Serbian Ministry of Interior, which oversees the state security agency. (In a power-sharing agreement reached last week, Kostunica's DOS, Milosevic's Socialists and Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement each appointed one representative to the ministry's leadership, until new Serbian parliament elections are held Dec. 23.) In one of his first interviews since being appointed, Prelevic said firing Markovic was potentially a very dangerous business. It could lead, he said, to a total loss of control over the secret police, one of Serbia's most powerful and dangerous institutions.

"I am not going to allow that such a service disintegrates," Prelevic said last week in an interview. "Something like that happened in Eastern Europe, producing one of the most qualified mafias and hit services in the world. We can't let them become available for some adventures. The state security service is a real problem. There is no clear law on how to regulate this service."

Miroslav Hristodulo, an advisor to opposition leader Zarko Korac, said Kostunica may have other reasons not to fire Markovic -- yet.

"Kostunica may have some agreement, or moral obligation to Rade Markovic," Hristodulo said. "It seems on October 5 and 6" -- the days of the revolution --"Yugoslav army General Nebojsa Pavkovic and Markovic may have assisted Kostunica" in turning the army and police and secret police away from Milosevic and to the opposition, Hristodulu said.

He suggested that there may be an agreement between Kostunica and the leaders of the security services to keep them in their positions. And if such a deal exists, breaking it would mean losing control of those rogue forces.

Over time, Milosevic's government was transformed into a vehicle for conducting personal vendettas, a fact that was on display Wednesday.

Curuvija, once a friend to Milosevic and his wife, became an increasingly fierce critic of the regime in 1998, when the Serbian parliament rubber-stamped a draconian public information law. The law allowed Milosevic regime officials to shut down and fine the press based on the merest of excuses.

Curuvija, who published the newspapers the Daily Telegraph and the Weekly Telegraph and European magazine, became one of the hardest-hit targets of the information law. Eventually, he and his editor in chief and one of his journalists were sentenced to five months in prison, and fined millions of dollars for violations of the law.

Soon Curuvija became an openly hounded target of the Milosevic regime, after a watershed event in which Curuvija's newspaper published the clenched-fist symbol of the student pro-democracy group Otpor, whose name means "resistance."

When Kandic and Curuvija's widow, Prpa, spoke to the press conference Wednesday, the mood was subdued and emotional. Curuvija had been a well-known member of the Belgrade press corps. Attending journalists seemed shocked not only by revelations of the state's role in political violence, but at the facts revealed about crimes against one of their own.

"It's terrible what is revealed in this document," said Heri Steiner, an older journalist who serves as president of Belgrade's independent media center, as he introduced the press conference. "It's starting to be uncovered, so many things they did to us."

Prpa expressed hope that Serbia was entering a time when the rule of law would prevail over the private hatreds and obsessions of its leaders. "I hope we are entering a period where the right to freedom, the right to privacy and the right to life are guarded by the law. I believe we are entering such an era."

Kandic echoed Prpa's call for courts and government institutions in the new Serbia to function according to the rule of law. She also asked for the SDB to start revealing information it has on other crimes, including other assassinations and war crimes, and on missing people, including the former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic, who disappeared while jogging in Belgrade in August.

"It's not true the SDB doesn't know what happened to former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic," Kandic said. "They have information, on this and other crimes. These things have to be explained to the public, thrown in the open, and people held accountable for their actions."

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