A tragic death Bojan Stambolić, twenty-four-year-old daughter Ivan Stambolic, who died on April 28, 1988, in a traffic accident near Budva, not only remained, at least in public, unexplained to this day, but all these decades she carried heavy deposits of the tragic fate of a family, but, perhaps even more, the mark of evil a time when it was normal for one's children to be involved in political calculations.
Bojana Stambolić lost her life only a few months after Slobodan Milošević eliminated his godfather and previous protector from political life. After the famous Eighth session of the CC of Serbia, held in October 1987, Ivan Stambolić was removed from the post of President of the Presidency of the SR Serbia in December of the same year, and he was killed, after being kidnapped, on Fruška Gora on August 25, 2000.
That morning, Bojana, in her red "Fiesta", set off from Budva on her way to Croatia in the light but somehow sticky rain that is characteristic of this area. According to the report of the investigating judge Miodrag Živkovića, the report that waited 36 years in the archives of the Basic Court in Kotor to be published for the first time, at one point Bojana lost control of the vehicle, brushed her right side against the bumper which threw her to the opposite side of the road. The car broke through the protection and crashed into a thirty-meter deep ravine above the Jaz beach.
Her death was accompanied at first by an eerie silence, and then by a fall Slobodan Milosevic On October 5, 2000, it was increasingly labeled as "mysterious", "never clarified". There were suspicions and direct accusations that Milošević was directly responsible for the death of Ivan Stambolic's daughter.
"I really don't know why no one has ever asked me about that tragic event all this time," says Miodrag Živković, an investigating judge, then a lawyer, then a politician, and now a pensioner.
Official note of Kri. 1337/88
In the official note Kri. 1337/88, judge Živković wrote that on that day, at 11.20:XNUMX a.m., "he was informed by the duty service of the SUP Budva that on the main road Budva - Tivat in the place called "Yellow beam", there was a traffic accident in which one person lost his life".
"When I was going towards Jaz in an official vehicle, I didn't know who it was. On the spot, the police informed me that it was the daughter of Ivan Stambolić," recalls Živković, and the note states that the deputy of the municipal public prosecutor was also on the spot. Vladimir Vuletović, as well as Crimea. technician from Budva Bozo Kovijanic.
In the Record of the investigation, it is stated that "during the investigation, as well as during the occurrence of the accident, it was raining and the road was slippery and unsuitable for driving". It is also added that "on the spot there is a road made of a modern asphalt curtain" and "the highway is downhill, it is straight in nature, with the fact that it is observed forward in the direction of movement of the participant's vehicle, up to the place where the vehicle went off the left edge August, the slope increases and the road further presents a sharp curve to the left with a transverse slope also to the left".
The Record then describes in detail the location of the accident, the left and right side of the road from the direction of movement of the vehicle, with a precise indication that the road on the right side is bordered by a concrete gutter for water drainage. The left side of the road is, the Note says, bordered by a concrete curb.
"We went down from Jaz, and she went from Budva. It was drizzling. About a hundred meters from us we saw a blonde woman in a red car. She skidded, hit the right side first, the hill, spun around, and there, on the left side, where there was a cut, the bumpers were put on only later, she sprang down. We stopped, ran out, but there was nothing we could do, there was a precipice down there, really incised. We called the police and only later found out that Ivan Stambolić's daughter was in the car," he recalls even today. Vojin Dulović (1955), from Risno near Tivat, who is with his deceased fellow citizen Risto Stamatović, as stated in the Note, was an eyewitness to this event.
Dulović points out that there were no vehicles behind or in front of the car in which Bojana Stambolić was.
There is no photoelaboration in the documentation
The investigation was carried out according to all the rules of practice at the time, says Živković. The official note contains, among other things, the Record of the investigation, the autopsy report signed by dr Budimir Borovinić, the chemical analysis of the Department of Pathology and Forensic Medicine of the Titograd Medical Institute, which showed that there were no traces of alcohol in the blood of Bojana Stambolić, the report of an expert in the mechanical profession, B.Sc. Ing. Zoran Vidić, a sketch of the scene with a legend and an official note from SUP Budva signed by a traffic policeman Milutin Grujić.
What is missing in the documentation obtained by "Vijesti" is a photo report which, as Miodrag Živković claims, was done in detail on the spot and sent with other reports to the prosecution.
However, the traffic expertise was not done.
"In my time, it was a practice, when something like this happens, the investigating judge conducts an investigation, collects all the evidence and issues orders that are expedient and relevant. Then the files are delivered to the prosecutor's office, which can ask for something else to be done. It is obvious that the prosecutor's office archived this report. Today, traffic expertise would probably have to be done, but in the specific situation it would not change anything", explains Živković and adds that mechanical expertise is much more important.
A graduate in mechanical engineering has a similar opinion Srdjan Vukic, an authorized forensic expert in the field of mechanical engineering, who after a detailed analysis of the findings, says that the expert Vidić acted professionally, noted the exact mileage, tried to determine the technical correctness of the vehicle and thus confirmed that the front wheels react to turning the steering wheel, which would be information that confirms the correctness of the management system.
"It was also noted that the hydraulic oil in the tank was slightly below half, which also indicates that the brake system had enough oil to function properly," explains Vukić.
Attorney Bozo Prelevic, once an investigating judge himself, assesses that based on the documents it can be concluded that Miodrag Živković performed his job very professionally and undertook everything necessary to determine the cause of the traffic accident.
"It is indisputable that the cause was the slippery road and the speed at which the vehicle was moving. Every expert report starts from the police report where those two things are stated", explains Prelevic, who happened to be in Budva on those days.
Arrival of Stambolic in Budva
Court expert Vukić points out that it is important to know that the construction of the suspension (suspension) of the wheels and the braking system without ABS and other vehicle stability systems required very careful driving, especially in wet road conditions when the vehicle needs to further reduce speed and below the limit that exists on that part of the road.
"This vehicle had small 13- or 14-inch tires with a narrow profile that easily lose contact with the road in rainy conditions, and without an ABS system, even an experienced driver would have problems controlling the vehicle," explains Vukić.
Miodrag Živković mentions one detail which, in his opinion, caused a lot of suspicion among the Stambolić family. As the policemen who called told him Katarina Stambolić, Bojana's mother, to inform her about her daughter's death, she said that it was impossible because, as she said, Bojana had called her from the town of Podgora, on the Makarska Riviera, just before that.
"It will turn out from the conversation with her friends, with whom she was sitting the previous evening, that Bojana, so that her mother would not worry, told Katarina that she was calling from Podgora, but in fact she was still in Budva," recalls Živković.
Miodrag Živković heard from Ivan Stambolic for the first time two days later, at the time when the autopsy was performed. Stambolic then came.
"We talked for about half an hour in the parking lot, in front of the police building. I told him every detail of what I had done up to that point. I am sure that he had complete trust in me, unlike the police, whom he openly doubted and demanded that we communicate directly," states Živković, and adds that he sent all the documentation about the traffic accident to Ivan Stambolic via courier, which Bojana's father thanked most heartily.
The next day, after the accident, on April 29, 1988, "Pobjeda" and "Politika" published, at the bottom of the pages, without clarifying whose daughter it was, they published an almost identical short news about the traffic accident. Only a few obituaries of Bojanina and family friends of the Stambolić family appeared in one or another newspaper. In the central dailies of Serbia and Montenegro, not a single politician even offered condolences, which was unusual, but not unexpected considering that the media campaign under Milošević's control against Ivan Stambolic was already underway.
"No, absolutely no one invited me or asked me for anything. I worked according to my conscience. If I had any dilemma, I would have communicated it to the prosecutor," says Miodrag Živković, noting that Ivan Stambolić had no political enemies at the time. On the contrary, he adds, it could rather be said that the then Montenegrin ruling group was not in favor of Slobodan Milošević.
According to a senior official of the SDB of Montenegro, who wished to remain anonymous, there was no dilemma for the Montenegrin security service either.
"We did not work on that case. From the Budva police report, we concluded that there is no need for that. Everything was clear to us," said this security guard.
For the Stambolić family, however, neither then nor years later did Bojana's death remain under a veil of doubt.
At the funeral of their daughter, as Slavoljub Đukić writes in the book "On, she and we", Katarina Stambolić did not extend her hand to Slobodan Milošević.
Ivan did not get out of that "story"
Dr. Stambolic's friend of many years, and until the very last moment, was very close Vladimir Jovicic, in an interview with the Belgrade-based NIN in February 2001, testified that Ivan never questioned the connection between Bojana's death and the outcome of the Eighth Session at the end of 1987.
"Ivan has not come out of that 'story' since the day of Bojana's death, only the measure of his preoccupation with her experienced ebbs and flows until it almost overwhelmed him at the beginning of last year. He has been telling me about the circumstances under which Bojana lost her life for more than ten years, but never as obsessively as a few months before he was going to be kidnapped. And after frequent murders in Belgrade, as well as staged 'political and mafia traffic jams' throughout Serbia, Ivan almost no longer doubts that his Bojana is the forerunner of Milosevic's confrontations with political opponents. He was irrevocably convinced, like all of us, that Milosevic's brothers did not shy away from even the most cruel crimes. Moreover, she does not particularly care to cover them up in order to present herself as all-powerful and ruthless to the extent that no one can count on the achievement of justice and the law," said Jovičić.
In addition, Jovičić explains, the number of anonymous letters addressed to him with claims and even descriptions of the circumstances and methods of Bojana's liquidation was constantly growing.
"In that information, the grieving father was given 'evidence' that his daughter was killed because of him. There are even clues that the villains left behind, supposedly or really. All those anonymous letters first fueled Ivan's feelings of guilt. I say encouraged, because he carried that feeling completely unfounded from the moment of Bojana's death. He could not get rid of that feeling, despite the fact that he did not consciously contribute to that tragedy," Dr. Vladimir Jovičić told NIN.
Only this segment, regardless of all the facts that emerge from the currently available documents, casts a complete picture of the tragic death of Bojana Stambolić. It testifies more and more about the criminal system of Slobodan Milošević, who "killed" Ivan Stambolic long before his villains would kidnap him and brutally execute him on Fruška Gora, on August 25, 2000.
Bojana and Ivan
"The two of us then, in Miločer, despite everything, or because of everything, spent seven days, our most beautiful seven days. Michaelmas summer at sea. Empty beaches, almost deserted promenades. The two of us alone. She took me to cafes where her company gathers...
He suddenly reveals to me that he has been writing me letters all the time, for years, but he doesn't send them to me. That's how she talks to me. Now she decided to give me only one in which she writes why she loves me so much and why she is proud of me. She wouldn't let me read it in front of her. A wonderful and touching letter. How little we know our children! How maturely and vividly she told me about her love. This seven-day gathering in Miločer and our story about politics and me, what and how to proceed, we ended with her almost ultimate request, even a kind of blackmail, that I must not resign under any circumstances. 'Let Sloba replace you'. I promised that it would be so because she had real reasons and arguments for what she asked of me. As you know, I didn't fail, at least not in that."
("The road to emptiness", Ivan Stambolić, Radio B92, 1995)
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