Almost thirty-two years ago, the state of Montenegro plunged into the abyss Ibrahim Čikić and numerous Bosniaks, and to this day the investigation into this crime has not even begun. None of those who ordered and committed the crime in early 1994 have been held accountable for the monitored arrest of the leadership and members of the Party of Democratic Action, the brutal beatings, torture and attempts to break both the body and dignity of everyone, and most of all Čikić.
The police operation "Lim" remains one of the most shameful wounds of contemporary Montenegro, which no one wants to even look at, let alone heal, for decades.
The evidence exists, the witnesses exist, the victims exist, the perpetrators are mostly still alive and at large, but there seems to be a lack of political will.
Institutions, as Ibrahim Čikić tells "Vijesti", "lived in self-sufficient silence for three decades, as if silence was an institutional strategy, not a shame"...
WHILE I'M ALIVE - I'LL CALL THEM OUT
Long-time official Milo Djukanovic, security guards Bosko Bojović, Zoran Lazovic, Rade Anicic, Nikola Pelvis... are just some of those whom Ibrahim Čikić has been labeling for years as most responsible for the crime against the Bosniak people and himself. He claims that none of them have responded to the accusations he has made publicly.
“The silence of the Special Prosecution for War Crimes regarding the police operation 'Lim', which has lasted for more than thirty years, is frightening. From the time it was Vladimir Susovic was in that prosecutor's office, I called on him to prosecute that action and reveal the perpetrators who committed this terrible crime against the Bosniak people. Although, after several of my public appearances, he promised to open an investigation - he never did. This was also the case during Vesne Medenica, Ivica Stanković, not to mention them all... Nobody ever did anything. Stanković at one point dropped the criminal charges for genocide filed against Milo Đukanović, but under pressure from the international public he reopened them. I was at Lidija Vukčević, testified for over four hours, with his lawyer present Veselin Radulović", but nothing was ever done," Čikić told "Vijesti".
He adds that he expected the new government to do something, especially during the 42nd Government, when, he recalls, Milan Popovic i Vanja Ćalović Marković proposed lustration, and all parties were in favor of it.
"However, the then Deputy Prime Minister did not show sensitivity, and these people left the committee in which they were engaged."
Čikić claims that Montenegro has not moved since the 1990s, and says he thinks it is in a worse state now.
"Because then we had Slavko Perović and many more anti-fascists than today. I am afraid that the recent events in Zabjelo, in Podgorica, Herceg Novi, Bar and other cities of Montenegro, have shown that the mobilization of the mob on the issue of - 'Turks on the Buljuke', is ready to be organized in about fifteen minutes.”
He said, however, that he would call out those responsible for the police action "Lim" while he was alive.
“And never, as long as I live, will I stop, even though I have had fantastic financial offers to stop this... There is no force, no money that can dissuade me from this path and I am sure that the day of reckoning will come.”
He also talks about the decades of persecution of his family, who were labeled enemies of the state. He remembers that ten years after his arrest in Bijelo Polje, most people in his town fled to avoid meeting him.
"I watched them run across the street to avoid meeting me... Extremely few of them were willing to approach me and were brave enough to be with me. The first to walk through Bijelo Polje with me was the late Dasi Radovic - a legend of Yugoslav sports. He was the first to hold his head high next to me, he even took me to a Chetnik tavern to see if anyone would frown at me or say a word. We sat there for hours. I will never be able to forget that about him. He is one of the few who never gave up on me...”
SILENCE TO THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS LEADS TO OUR OWN SUFFERING
Returning to the impunity of those who abused and tortured 21 SDA members in the police operation "Lim", he said that the current prosecutor's office had enough time to react:
"I am surprised that the new government and the new prosecutor's office are not doing anything about this issue. Especially since everyone in Montenegro knows that the book 'Where the Sun Doesn't Warm' was declared to be of public interest by the Constitutional Court and the verdict of the Higher Court in Bijelo Polje, and that, among other things, the verdict said that I described the most shameful part of recent Montenegrin history in the mildest possible form...".
In his book, Čikić wrote about torture and a staged trial, and that's why he was tried.
"I had fantastic offers. That the book should not be published. That it should be softened. That it should disappear. There is no force, nor money, that can divert me from this path. And when I die - the book will remain for all eternity. And I will call them out dead, both in this world and in the next. The purpose of writing my book is so that the evil of the past will never be repeated, to any member of any nation. When the 'coup d'état' was in progress, I knew then that it was a staged police action, and I am proud to say that I took those people under my protection then, although they never did me. Unfortunately, I am sure that this action will not be prosecuted now either, because the same ideology and the same matrix are in place today as in the nineties, and I fear that every citizen of Montenegro will face in different forms what I was then, because silence on the suffering of others leads to one's own suffering. That is God's law and there is no escape from that."
CHRONOLOGY
The Montenegrin police, in Operation Lim, arrested the entire leadership of the SDA for Montenegro and several of its members in late January and early February 1994. They were arrested by members of the Special Unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, under the command of Vasa Baošića.
The then SDB announced that "the accused wanted to create the Independent State of Sandžak through armed force."
A police statement dated January 31, 1994 stated: “The Montenegrin State Security Service, in direct cooperation with the Serbian State Security Department, discovered that these people, otherwise members of the SDA, had organized military and paramilitary armed formations in order to create the preconditions for the territorial secession, by force and the use of armed force, of part of the territory of Montenegro.”
A special program on the Television of Montenegro, broadcast the same day, showed the unearthing of the weapons of the arrested. The "enemy press" that the accused were reading - several copies of "Monitor" - was also shown.
Operation "Lim" officially began on January 25, 1994, when Montenegrin special forces arrested Rasim Shahman, a former member of the Montenegrin parliament, at that time the secretary of the SDA.
All 21 arrested, according to their accounts, survived brutal torture in the police villa in Žabljak, and were then detained in the Bijelo Polje prison, in horrific cell conditions, without heating, toilets, beds or bedding. The almost blind Čikić was forced to admit that he had played the role of a sniper...
Despite statements by those arrested that they were subjected to physical and psychological torture, no one from the then SDB or the Montenegrin police was held accountable for this.
In December 1995, the defendants were pardoned by the then President of Montenegro. Momir Bulatović.
"We will skin him alive"
Čikić told "Vijesti" two days ago that he believes that the prosecution has never questioned any of those responsible for a crime "unimaginable to the human mind", despite the reports and the book "Where the Sun Does Not Warm" in which he described torture in detail.
"'Stop, fool! Stop, you won't kill him so easily, he has to go through all the torture that we put such people through. We'll skin him alive, then spread salt on him, then force sheep and goats on him through the forest!', Zoran shouted at the one who wanted to slaughter me, and let me know that it wasn't as easy to die as I had thought until that moment. 'Take him to Foča, for processing. Before Foča, Kornjaci to Čajniče. Got it, fool?', Zoran's voice was heard, who continued: 'While you're taking him, don't talk to him, got it? Can you hear our people bombarding Balije with tanks and cannons and our volunteers firing?', Zoran addressed me. 'From here, Goražde is being targeted, and here we're riding your women. Goodbye, Chetnik brothers,' he said and the sound of a jeep engine driving away was heard", is just a fragment of Ibrahim Čikić's book describing the role of Zoran Lazović, Rad Aničić and others, in the torture carried out on him and those arrested in the police operation "Lim"...
The frightening silence of self-proclaimed Bosniak religious and political leaders
Čikić emphasizes the terrifying silence of "self-proclaimed Bosniak religious and political leaders" over the years about what their compatriots endured during the war years of the 1990s.
"Never, not even with a single word, even though they had the opportunity or were provoked by certain journalists to speak out about the police operation 'Lim', did they mention that case. I am not asking for Ibrahim Čikić to be mentioned, but for the prosecution of the organizers and perpetrators responsible for the torture...".
When asked who was most responsible for this crime, he said that the documentation shows that this action was carefully planned in Kraljevo:
"The entire leadership of the then Yugoslav Army was present and, of course, members of the governments of Montenegro and Serbia. We know who is responsible - Milo Đukanović at number one, because it could not have happened without him. He was a member of the Supreme Defense Council at the time and gave his consent for it, and then the others who participated in it. As for the perpetrators, I know that at that time, in a spectacular manner, in the premises of the Red Cross when I went to collect aid, I was arrested by Zoran Lazović, Rade Aničić and this guy who has an ethno village near Mojkovac, with 50 police officers armed to the teeth. Nikola Medenica hit me when they brought me to the police station and laughed at me for not being able to walk from the beatings."
SDT remains silent about police operation "Lim"
For almost a month, the SDT has not responded to "Vijesti's" questions about whether and when they formed a case to determine whether a crime against humanity was committed against Čikić and others, for which he accuses the then state leadership, the judge, the prosecutor, as well as numerous police officials.
"If SDT truly wants to do its job, the priority of all priorities in Montenegro is the police operation 'Lim'. Especially since they have a first-class indictment in the form of the book 'Where the Sun Doesn't Warm'... Could there be a harsher indictment than that book, which I previously submitted to the Prosecutor's Office? Probably the silence of the self-proclaimed Bosniak religious and political leaders and the silence of the entire people leads them to see that Bosniaks are uninterested, especially the current self-proclaimed Bosniak leaders, and then they are relaxed. They see that when Bosniaks do not ask for it, there is no need to move, because Ibrahim Čikić is an individual, for whom the Bosniak people do not stand up because he does not fit into their concept."
He adds that everyone is ignoring the fact that it's not just about him, because, according to the Helsinki Committee for the Protection of Human Rights in Sandžak, 17.500 people were tortured in the "Lim" police operation, and a hundred thousand of them left Sandžak...
"They helped me more and I had more support from true friends of Serbs and Montenegrins who did their utmost to help me, stood up for me in writing and in public speeches, and I will never forget that. The situation is still like this today... I think that says enough that the main job of everyone who deals with national issues of all peoples in Montenegro is exclusively personal interest and personal enrichment, and they are not as interested in the people as they were in last year's snow."
Bonus video:
