If it weren't for Alija

I admit: I borrowed the title from Dino Merlin, but my text - unlike his song - is not about Alija Miladin, a first fighter of the Sarajevo defense from the ranks of the Green Berets, but about Alija Izetbegović, a first fighter of the Presidency of BiH from the ranks of the SDA, writes the editor-in-chief of "Oslobođenje" Vildana Selimbegović in today's column, reports the BiH news agency Patria.

On Saturday, the 90th anniversary of Alija's birth was marked, and his son Bakir, today his successor in his father's positions, elected to the state Presidency for the second time and finally the leader of the SDA, spoke inspiringly about his difficult but heroic life. However, I do not intend to compare father and son, on the contrary: the reason for this text is the strong support of son Bakir to finally untangle the political affairs from the time of father Alija.

Izetbegović Jr. also speaks about this in an interview in today's Oslobođenje, explaining the inter-party agreement of SDA, Party for BiH, A SDA, and BPS to jointly provide full institutional and party support for resolving political assassinations committed during and after the war; he lists them himself: the Halilović, Ugljen, Leotar families, he says, rightly expect the prosecutor's offices and courts to provide them with an answer, and my family has been expecting an answer for a decade regarding the attack on Alija Izetbegović's grave. So, let's go in Bakir's order.

The Halilović family, father Sefer, son Semir, and daughter Mirela, all members of BPS (father president, son vice-president and representative in the Sarajevo Canton Assembly, daughter representative in the FBiH Parliament), experienced a family tragedy on July 7, 1993: Mediha, Sefer Halilović's wife and Semir and Mirela's mother, and her brother Edin Rondić lost their lives in an explosion in Ciglane. Less than a month earlier (June 8), Sefer Halilović was removed from his command position in the General Staff of ARBiH: in fact, by the decision of the Presidency of BiH (read: Alija's), Rasim Delić was appointed commander of the General Staff, and Sefer remained chief until November 1 of the same year. In the meantime, he was in Herzegovina and under investigation and house arrest: Operation Neretva was the subject in The Hague, due to crimes committed against civilians in Grabovica and Uzdol. The Tribunal decided that Halilović did not have a command role in Operation Neretva '93 and was acquitted. In The Hague itself, Halilović insisted that "Alija Izetbegović, Rasim Delić and Bakir Alispahić are guilty of the crimes committed by members of the Army of BiH in September 1993 in Grabovica." The investigation and house arrest took place in wartime Sarajevo, in the autumn of 1993, when the state of BiH was dealing with crime and corruption within its own ranks: on the famous October 26, when Mušan Topalović Caco was arrested and killed, when Ramiz Delalić Ćelo surrendered, Sefer Halilović was detained and interrogated.

Bakir Alispahić, then Minister of Police, and Rasim Delić, then commander of ARBiH, who jointly led this operation, jointly signed the criminal complaint against Halilović - among other (mis)deeds, they accused him of the ambition of a coup d'état in the midst of war - but Halilović was not prosecuted. They say, by Alija's will. The death of his wife and her brother was the subject of a police and military, or rather military-police investigation: for the state of BiH, it was an aggressor's shell. On the 20th anniversary of his mother's death, Semir Halilović said in an interview for Nezavisne novine that the Halilović family has treated the event as an assassination for 15 years, "it was a bomb, the inspirers, concealers and executors are known." "When it comes to politics, I will be very clear: only Alija Izetbegović could have ordered and approved the murder of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army of BiH, General Sefer Halilović," said Halilović Jr., accusing - as executors - Bakir Alispahić, Fikret Muslimović, Enver Mujezinović, Bakir Sadović, Nedžad Herenda, Nedžad Ugljen...

The Ugljen family, as we said, also expects an answer: Nedžad Ugljen was killed on September 28, 1996, in Prijedorska Street in Sarajevo. In a parking lot, just an hour after he arrived from Mostar. At the time of his death, he was the assistant director of AID (the director was Kemal Ademović). This long-time intelligence officer and equally long-time close associate of Bakir Alispahić - both when Alispahić was Minister of Police and later when he was director of AID - came to Sarajevo from Mostar as a proven cadre of the former State Security Service: on the eve of the war, Ugljen had a thick, comprehensive, and intensively processed file on Adil Zulfikarpašić. In the former SDB, he covered the Yugoslav emigration abroad. There is, of course, not enough space for details, but it is important to remember that Ugljen - the investigation found - knew he was being followed, he even claimed it in several phone calls, including during the trip from Mostar! He even told Senad Pećanin, then editor-in-chief of Dani, on the street that he was afraid he would be killed. Later, it turned out that Ugljen made the same claim in several places, and stored a tape he recorded at KCUS in several addresses, on the same day that Nedžad Herenda, also an AID employee, emerged from a manhole he ended up in after an abduction carried out by AID members?!

Edin Garaplija, Haris Pezo and Refik Muran, Herenda's abductors, were convicted and then acquitted, but they all claimed that they abducted Herenda according to service rules and the order of their superior, that they kept Herenda in MUP's "safe houses" (and tortured him), or transported him in official cars. Before the Supreme Court of FBiH, Garaplija explained that Operation Orao was carried out in accordance with the Law on AID, and that he received information, as well as the order to interrogate Herenda, from director Ademović, and that was because of Ševo, whose prominent member Herenda was. Garaplija also asked the Court to "give their statements about Ševo to Alija and Bakir Izetbegović, Kemal Ademović, Fikret Mašić, Husein Hajdarević, Irfan Ljevaković and Jusuf Pušina", while Ugljen - by recording Herenda's statement in the hospital on tape - actually documented a horrific story about torture and an attempted murder. He himself claimed that the case was related to him, i.e., that Herenda was interrogated about him, Bakir Alishaić, and Enver Mujezinović. Alispahić was sidelined at the time - due to Pogorelica - by order of Alija Izetbegović and worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Pogorelica is a separate story, but Alispahić was later arrested, tried, and acquitted because of it. And the only thing he never denied was his loyalty and readiness to carry out the orders of his superior Alija Izetbegović without question. As for the murder of Nedžad Ugljen, even investigators admitted to journalists that they knew they were being obstructed, and the public remained under the deep conviction that - precisely because of all the connected cases - Nedžad Ugljen was a victim of state terror, the most typical example of the execution of a witness who knows too much.      

Let's not forget the Leutar family: Jozo Leutar was killed in Sarajevo, in Ciglane, in his official car on March 16, 1999. The explosive device that inflicted fatal wounds on him was mounted under his official car, then deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Government of the Federation of BiH. There were arrests, and even trials, but the killers were never discovered. Alija Izetbegović's statement was recorded, in which he wisely concluded that Leutar was killed by "either their extremists or our fools." That Alija Izetbegović knew how to concisely depict reality is evidenced by his explanation for the dismissal of Sefer Halilović from the position of the first man of the Army of RBiH many years later - in 2000 in the book "Memories" (autobiographical notes) - "lack of personal courage".

Today, it seems that both his son and Halilović with the whole family have enough courage to face the truth. They expect it from the BiH judiciary. It would be immensely important for them to persevere. I am not saying that the sons will learn painful truths about their fathers, I am only saying that - primarily for the Bosniak political scene - the truth can be liberating. That we finally find out who is an extremist, who is our fool, who killed whom, and who raised the air and the living and the dead. The beginning is promising: Izetbegović and Halilović agreed that these were political assassinations.