SARAJEVO CRIMINALS JUKA AND ĆELO IN ORGANIZED ATTACK ON JNA SOLDIERS

EAST SARAJEVO, MAY 27 /SRNA/ - While fighting was taking place on May 2 near the Sarajevo Đuro Đaković Workers' University, a unit of the Military Police, namely the Sabotage Platoon of the 65th Protective Motorized Regiment of the Yugoslavian People’s Army /JNA/, under the command of Captain Marko Labudović, headed from the Military Hospital towards the JNA Home.

Their task, which was conveyed by Colonel Milan Šuput on the orders of General Milutin Kukanjac, was also to extract wounded soldiers from the JNA House who were in a blockade and encirclement, according to the “Atlas of Crimes” published by the Republic Center for the Research of War, War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons.

Four vehicles set out to help the wounded soldiers - two ambulances clearly marked with the Red Cross and two Pinzgauers accompanying them. Incidentally, this was the most elite unit of the JNA in Sarajevo at that moment, and the theories that say that the events of May 2 were provoked only in order to get the aforementioned unit out of the Military Hospital where it was being guarded, and to eliminate it from further fighting in a perfidious manner, seem completely realistic.

Namely, the 65th Motorized Protection Regiment was the most experienced military unit in the 2nd Military District and was exclusively subordinate to the District Command itself. It gained extensive experience in performing complex tasks during the withdrawal of the JNA from Slovenia and Croatia. This is the reason why General Kukanjac entrusted these high-risk tasks to them. For this reason, part of the unit was preparing for the movement from the Military Hospital area.

The book "Nobody's Soldiers" states about this event that "in the first `Pinzgauer` 710 M without a tarpaulin, Private Pejić, who was also driving it, took the driver's seat. Lieutenant Obrad Gvozdenović pulled him out of the cabin and ordered him to climb onto the body of the vehicle".

Private Pejić sits on the bench just behind him, while Captain Labudović sits in the passenger seat. Lieutenant Ivica Cvetković stands behind the "M-84" machine gun mounted on the roof of the vehicle. In addition to Pejić, soldiers Branko Popović, Aleksandar Blagojević and Srđan Nikolić are sitting on the body of the vehicle.

In the second "Pinzgauer", the driver was Lieutenant Mihad Kastrati, the passenger was Private Kruno Bešlić, Sergeant Dragan Matić was behind the machine gun on the roof, and the soldiers Dragan Lazukić, Mladen Nikolić, Dragan Glamočić, Radoš Pajović and Dragoslav Nikolić were sitting on the body of the vehicle.

A column of four vehicles set off from the main entrance along Kranjčevićeva Street and exited onto Hamze Hume Street. Gvozdenović drove fast, rushing to reach the wounded as quickly as possible. Upon arriving at Skenderija, a black BMW belonging to Sarajevo criminal Juko Prazina was waiting for them at the intersection, with a rotating beacon on the roof.

The same one that the saboteurs had asked to shoot because of the daily provocations around the Military Hospital, but they never got permission from Captain Labudović. A man with a camera was sitting in the passenger seat, filming the arrival of the convoy. The street to the right towards the Parliament of BiH was closed with hedgehogs, and on the street there was a "tam" truck and a Volkswagen Jetta with all four turn signals on.

As the convoy entered the intersection on Skenderija, the BMW moved backwards to Save Kovačevića Street, turned into the street and slid its rear end behind the building on Mis Irbina Street, while the front end remained protruding. In Obala Vojvode Stepe Street, there were three empty trams on the tram tracks.

ATTACKS BY ĆELO AND JUKA'S /NON-/MEN ON THE JNA COLUMN AT SKENDERIJA

When the first "pinz" came across the second tram, a shot rang out. Gvozdenović was shot from the building on the corner of Obala vojvode Stepe and Save Kovačevića streets, after which the "pinz" lost control, stalled, veered to the left and almost overturned. At that moment, a man appeared with a hand-held launcher on his shoulder, aiming at the "pinz".

Lieutenant Cvetković eliminates him with a burst of machine gun fire. Labudović jumps out in front of the vehicle and waves his arms up to stop the fire. He turns towards the first "pincer" and the soldiers clearly hear the command: "Cease fire!"

Cvetković stops shooting. Labudović walks down the street for about ten meters with his arms raised, waving crosswise at the building, shouting: "Don't shoot!" Then the first bullet hits him and he falls.

Cvetković starts shooting at the building from the roof, while from that building opposite the park and the buildings on the corner of Valtera Perića Street, a crossfire begins from all weapons along the column in a classic "horseshoe". Sergeant Matić gives the order: "Attack the vehicle!" and the soldiers jump out of the second "pinz", while the first "pinz" is hit by an explosive device in the lower right part of the cabin where Captain Labudović was sitting about ten seconds before.

The soldiers, wounded while still in the vehicle, jump out and lie under the tram, while Cvetković and Pejić remain on the body. Pejić shoots the "BMW", or rather the part of it that sticks out from behind the corner of the building. Matić acts from the second "pinz", firing towards the building opposite the park in Mis Irbina Street. Labudović manages to get up and shouts again: "Don't shoot!", but he is hit again.

He pulls between the trams towards the concrete embankment of the Miljacka River. The first to jump out of the body of the second "pinz" are Dragoslav Nikolić and Radoš Pajović. Both are immediately wounded. Dragoslav gets a bullet in the leg and falls over the driver of the first ambulance, who is moaning that he is wounded. While shooting over him, protecting him, he says to him: "Brother, I am too, be quiet and retreat."

The driver of the second ambulance, who was a civilian, jumped out of the vehicle, got out behind the tram along the concrete embankment to the Miljacka, where the soldier-driver of the first ambulance somehow managed to drag himself along. There, on the embankment, shots were fired from buildings on the other side of the Miljacka, killing the soldier-driver of the first ambulance, and the driver of the second ambulance ran along the concrete riverbed towards the Eiffel Bridge. At the bridge, he tried to climb onto the street and was caught by Muslim forces.

Lieutenant Kastrati runs through the park with only a gun and crosses the Koševski Stream, while Matić and the others support him. An Albanian by nationality, he was an exceptional student, completing the first and second years of the Military Academy in one year. He was last in his native Požarevac in March.

His mother Senija begged him not to return to Sarajevo, as he was about to get married, and two of his colleagues had also left the units in Sarajevo, but Castro, as he was called over the Motorola, said: "I don't want to be a traitor, mother." He jumped out of the stream and ran down both sides of Hamza Hume Street under fire. At the building on the corner of Valtera Perića Street, he came across the commander of the Military Police of the Muslim forces, Ismet Bajramović Ćelo.

According to one version, he had a gun pointed at him, and according to another, he did not even take the gun out of its holster, but came to negotiate. In both versions, he asked Ćelo to order his men to cease firing and allow the group to return to the Military Hospital. In both versions, he is shot dead in the back.

MASSACRED SOLDIERS AT SKENDERIJA

Cvetković heroically continues to try to defend the group from the "pinz". Quite by chance, he ended up at the Military Hospital that day, because the previous afternoon, due to the attack by Muslim forces on the hospital, he could not return to Lukavica, where he was stationed.

Matić fires an ammunition box from another machine gun and then receives a bullet in the hip. He falls onto the body of the vehicle and, seeing that his soldiers are wounded, shouts from the body: "We surrender, do not shoot". It seems to him that the Muslims are firing even harder at his shouts. He jumps over the side of the vehicle onto the street. The machine gun is taken over by soldier Mladen Nikolić from Maglaj, whom his comrades in the detachment called Mrko.

Of the complete weapons, Mladen liked the M-84 machine gun the most. On one occasion, when they were being shot at for days by snipers from the buildings called "Momo and Uzeir" in the Military Hospital, he took a machine gun, continued firing and shot all the floors from where they were shooting at the hospital. TV Sarajevo, as always at that time, "objectively" reported that "saboteurs attacked civilian buildings and that there were dead".

Now he is shooting at the building opposite the park from where they are being shot at from every window. Nikolić and Bešlić from Zavidovići went to the same school, so they knew each other even before the army. They lie wounded next to each other on the Sarajevo asphalt.

When the protection regiment, which also included a saboteur squad, was deployed from Zagreb to Slunj in the fall of 1991, Kruno's father came to visit him. He urged him to leave the unit and go home with him. Kruno refused and said that he would stay with his comrades until he had served his military service.

On that occasion, his father, a Croat, told him that he would pay someone to kill him if he stayed in the JNA. After his father left, the elders found Kruno with tears in his eyes. They told him that he could go home if he was sorry for staying. Kruno replied that he was not sorry about the decision, but was afraid that his father would do something bad to his mother, who was a Serb, at home.

Although repeatedly wounded, all the soldiers fought heroically. Radoš Pajović, running out of ammunition, took off his "zolja" from his shoulder. He stood up to take a better position, while Dragoslav shouted at him not to get up. He fires a rocket at a machine gun nest in a building on the corner and the next moment he falls, mortally wounded. Labudović crawls towards the Eiffel's Bridge.

Fire also begins from the opposite bank, from the Skenderija Hall. Cvetković is left without ammunition for his machine gun. He and Pejić lie down next to the other soldiers. Branko Popović is killed, Aleksandar Blagojević is seriously wounded, while Srđan Nikolić fights heroically.

Blagojević served his military service and a three-month extension, but due to the situation in Sarajevo he could not go home. He could have resigned from the ranks and not gone on an assignment, no one would have blamed him for that, but he did not, he stayed with his comrades until the last moment.

Lazukić does not hear the machine gun next to him. He turns around and sees Mladen lying on his back. He shakes him: "Mrko, Mrko, are you alive?" Mladen's lifeless eyes were fixed on the sky. Something hits Pejić in the helmet. He thought it was a bullet, but he realized that Cvetković was hitting him with his hand because he didn't hear him. He asks him: "Kid, do you have anything?", meaning ammunition.

Pejić wants to give him two frames from the automatic rifle he was holding in the side pocket of his trousers, but he sees that the bullet hit there and that the frames have broken and the bullets have fallen out.

"I have nothing," he replies, and one by one the saboteurs run out of ammunition. Cvetković takes out his pistol and fires until the last bullet. Pejić asks him: "What should we do, comrade lieutenant?" Seeing that there is no answer, he turns around and sees his commander lying there with blood flowing from his forehead down his face. He crawls under a tram and finds shelter behind one of the two kiosks on the bank of the Miljacka River.

According to the survivors, after about fifteen minutes, the saboteurs stopped shooting because they had no more ammunition. They killed the wounded one by one as if at a shooting range. /to be continued/