Warlord, Now a Serbian Patriot, Is Buried (original) (raw)

Gunmen in Serbia Kill 'Arkan,' an Indicted Paramilitary Leader (Jan. 16, 2000)

By STEVEN ERLANGER

ELGRADE, Serbia, Jan. 20 -- Several thousand people came today to bury Zeljko Raznatovic, the indicted war-crimes suspect known as Arkan, but also to praise him.

After a small funeral service for family and close friends in the chapel of Belgrade's main cemetery, the thousands of mourners, some of them weeping, followed Mr. Raznatovic's son Mihajlo, who carried a cross, while uniformed members of Mr. Raznatovic's Serbian Volunteer Guard, known as the Tigers, carried the coffin to the grave.

Wearing camouflage and red berets, they fired a salute with their rifles as an old Serbian hymn played. Mr. Raznatovic, born in Slovenia to an army father, was portrayed as a Serbian hero, fighting to extend and consolidate Serbdom and Serbian land, and he himself enjoyed wearing a uniform of the First World War.

Mr. Raznatovic, 47, was gunned down on Saturday, along with two other men, a businessman and a police official, in the Intercontinental Hotel here. As newspapers competed for unverifiable details about the assassins and their motives, some officials of the governing party began to describe Mr. Raznatovic as a patriot and a hero, despite his criminal activities.

As the coffin was lowered into the grave, Borislav Pelevic, a "general" in the Guard, said, "Commander, I hereby submit the last report: the status of the Serb Volunteer Guard is normal, the status of the party is regular." Mr. Raznatovic also led a small political party, the Party of Serbian Unity.

But there was no mention today of Mr. Raznatovic's indictment in 1997 by the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague -- an indictment announced only last March, during NATO's bombing war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.

Mr. Raznatovic and his Tigers played an important role on the Serbian side in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia in 1991 and 1992-95. He was also a pioneer of ethnic purging, and his indictment, still sealed, is reported to include the murder of 250 Croats taken from a hospital in 1991.

Goran Hadzic, the leader of the autonomous Serbian republic in Croatia, which was overrun by the Croatian army in 1995, praised Mr. Raznatovic today as a friend, adviser and soldier.

"We were friends," he said. "But he was a big hero." Mr. Raznatovic, with Belgrade's approval, ran guns to the Croatian Serbs before war broke out there in 1991, and he helped fight in eastern Slavonia, another region of Croatia.

Ivica Dacic, the spokesman of the Socialist Party of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, attended Mr. Raznatovic's wedding to the popular folk singer Svetlana, known as Ceca, in 1995, but did not come to the funeral. But, in a statement, he said, "Regardless of his contradictory biography, Arkan was no doubt a patriot."

More telling were kind words from the Radical Party leader, Vojislav Seselj, who had roaring battles with Mr. Raznatovic in television debates. Once, on state television, Mr. Seselj said: "I bet you've put a black sock on your face more often than on your foot."

But today, Mr. Seselj said in a statement: "One thing is for sure -- Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan was a true Serb patriot and all the political misunderstandings and conflicts we had should be forgotten now."

Opposition politicians, especially from Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement, have charged that the Milosevic government probably ordered Mr. Raznatovic's death because he was becoming too powerful and disloyal.