DUSAN ERCEG DADO With his letter from prison, which has proven crucial in discovering leads to the principals behind the murder of Ivo Pukanic that point to Montenegro, Dusan Erceg has proven himself a brave man
USKOK and the State Attorney's Office have wrapped up the investigation into the assassination of Ivo Pukanic and Niko Franjic on a high note. During the past few days they have found new material evidence in the form of two unexpected insider witnesses and significant new insight into the case. What appears to be most important in these new revelations is certainly the reliable and confidential information from two independent sources that indicate that the assassination of Ivo Pukanic was planned in Budva, Montenegro. This indicates with a growing certainty that the principals behind the assassination should be sought there.
Nacional learned as far back as in mid August that the trail to the principals behind the assassination could lead to Montenegro when Dusan Erceg Dado, one of the two unexpected witnesses in the investigation of the assassination of Pukanic that last week gave statements to the investigating judge, first contacted our editorial office.
Erceg contacted the Nacional editorial office by phone in August, when during a short conversation from a telephone booth in the prison in Sremska Mitrovica he asked to be provided with the address of a trustworthy legal office, where he could send a letter detailing what he knew in connection to the assassination of Ivo Pukanic. A few days after receiving the address, Erceg succeeded in smuggling the letter out of jail and sending it indirectly to Nacional.
Dusko Erceg was born in Rascane in 1959 and later lived in Makarska. He participated in some sensitive operations in the Croatian defence effort at the very beginning of the Homeland War, and was captured in the process and spent several years in Serbian prisons. After his release from the prison in Sremska Mitrovica he wound up on the wrong side of the law and again found himself in a Serbian prison.
He claims to have been set up by the Serbian intelligence service because of his participation in the hunt for Radovan Karadzic. While serving a prison sentence in Sremska Mitrovica, Erceg came into direct contact with Robert Matanic and Milos Perunicic. Robert Matanic is a Croatian criminal who was at the time serving a prison sentence for crimes previously committed in Serbia. Milos Perunicic is a Serbian criminal still incarcerated there, serving time for crimes committed earlier in Serbia. The two are suspected of, each in their own way, later having participated in the assassination of Ivo Pukanic. In a direct conversation, the two told him that they would kill Pukanic sooner or later, and related their motives for wanting to kill him. Erceg wished to relate this insight to the competent Croatian institutions, and has sent a letter detailing it all to Nacional.
Erceg asked Nacional to exercise caution and discretion in dealing with the letter, and that it be passed on to the authorised national authorities with the aim of working out a way to communicate with him directly, as he claimed to have information that could help shed light on the motives of some of the people who carried out the assassination, the background and perhaps the principal behind the assassination. Erceg's letter was passed on to Chief State Attorney Mladen Bajic, together with Erceg's explicit request that he not be contacted via the Serbian Interior Ministry or their secret services, saying he did not trust them.
A few weeks after sending the first letter, Erceg sent Nacional another two letters, and the latter of these explained in cipher how it would be possible to create the preconditions for someone from Croatia to visit him, possibly an undercover agent of the Croatian Central Intelligence Agency, or an undercover investigator from the Bureau for the Prevention of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK). Even prior to turning to Nacional, Erceg had informed then Croatian General Police Director Vladimir Faber of his insight into the assassination of Pukanic.
He also sent a letter of similar content to the Croatian consulate in Belgrade. The competent Croatian institutions, however, initially did nothing for some time to try to contact him, and then for unknown and inexplicable reasons did the exact opposite of what Erceg had requested. In early October, Erceg was visited in prison by representatives of the Serbian Interior Ministry who demanded he tell them what he knew of the murder of Ivo Pukanic. As a result, Erceg wrote a letter of protest to Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko on 3 October, and forwarded a copy to the Nacional editorial office.
Among other things the letter describes how he was called to questioning with investigators in a way that all of the prisoners there could hear. "I was called rudely, i.e. over the PA system on 1 October 2009 to prepare myself for questioning by the police at the request of the Croatian police, which is unacceptable. I was then taken to the office of a psychologist who adheres to a clero-nationalist faction in Serbia. In a small office, a young lady, dressed like a woman of the stage, and two gentlemen told me that they had to question me at the request of the Croatian police concerning the circumstances of the Pukanic case.
They read an official note from the Croatian Interior Ministry to establish their credibility... Mr. Minister, I ask that the Croatian Interior Ministry please refrain from contacting me through the Serbian Interior Ministry, as there are many shady characters in the Serbian Interior Ministry. You should know that Matanic was once visited here not by members of our, but rather Serbian services that remain to this day close to "The Dutchman", who to this day visit Milos Perunicic and Miodrag Kocic from Beli Manastir.
The Serbian Interior Ministry and the BIA know very well who has authority over them... In conclusion I beg you that our police truly does not contact me by way of others, as I wish to get out of this misery alive on 20 April 2010, if that is at all possible." In spite of everything, and quite unexpectedly, Dusan Erceg was released from the prison in Sremska Mitrovica on Tuesday, 13 October 2009, after the competent judicial authority in Serbia accepted his appeal and awarded him probation. That same day, the competent Serbian institutions cut short his welcome in Serbia and deported him at the Bajakovo border crossing.
In spite of the fact that the Croatian police exposed him to grave peril in Serbian prisons, contrary to his pleas, Erceg immediately contacted Croatian police officers as soon as he got to Bajakovo.
A police officer allowed him to call a person he trusted in the late afternoon, and that person picked him up and drove him to the central bus station in Zagreb, from where he initially intended to head to Makarska. Erceg reconsidered, however, and called the police. He then spent the night in Zagreb at the Palace hotel and the next day contacted USKOK agents. He told them of what he knew pertaining to the assassination of Ivo Pukanic, and then last Friday gave testimony in the capacity of a witness before the judge investigating the case. Dusan Erceg has proven himself a brave man in this case.The protected witness on a photo carried by the Globus magazine for a 1998 interview on Croatian concentration camp internees
In the letters he sent to Nacional, he wrote that he decided to help in this case only because Ivo Pukanic had helped him in 1998 in a situation that meant a great deal to him at the time. It was at the time that Erceg gave a major interview for the Globus weekly, printed in February of 1998 as the cover article. In the interview, he spoke of his internment at Sremska Mitrovica, where he spent several years as a prisoner of war.
In the interview for Globus, he revealed that there were still many Croatian POWs in Serbian prisons at the time, even though the Croatian authorities had ceased to believe so. In this situation, Erceg demonstrated his courage as he risked much every time he sent a letter from prison. Erceg succeeded in smuggling each letter out of prison to have a person he trusted forward it to the Nacional editorial board. To not expose this person to great risk, he asked that they send the letter as registered mail, and that they glue his address at the prison on the envelope, which he wrote on a separate piece of paper, which the person then glued to the envelope.
This was done so that the letter would be returned to him in prison if it was not received by the person who it was addressed to, but so that the guards did not suspect the handwriting, which could have happened had someone else wrote his name and address on the back of the envelope. Erceg also sent Nacional his correspondence with the administration of the prison in Sremska Mitrovica, and with Serbian judicial authorities.
He even wrote to Serbian President Boris Tadic from prison and in a very comprehensive letter informed him who the chief criminal overlords in the Sremska Mitrovica prison were, and warned of the unacceptable and dramatic situation in which some Serbian crime clans ran the prison, procured mobile phones, bribed guards and the like. The circumstances in which he approached the Croatian police also lend Erceg credibility.
Although he had just gotten out of jail, instead of enjoying his freedom for a while, Erceg immediately went to the police in order to try and contact the competent national institutions he wanted to help in the investigation into the murder of Pukanic with the information he had. The content of the testimony Erceg gave to the investigating judge is not known to Nacional. The fact that he could be a very important witness, however, is evident from the claims of well informed judicial sources that Erceg was immediately afforded police protection.
The day after his testimony to the investigating judge, the Jutarnji list daily reported that a Darko Erceg, who had served a prison sentence in Sremska Mitrovica together with Robert Matanic, had been questioned in connection to the investigation into the assassination of Ivo Pukanic.
IVO PUKANIC AND NIKO FRANJIC A year after the ghastly murder, investigators have evidence that leads MontenegroThe name published was incorrect, but the information that it was a witness that had done time in Sremska Mitrovica was accurate. Nacional has decided to publish the identity of Dusan Erceg in order to prevent possible manipulation concerning his identity and credibility, because the newspapers had begun to report inaccurate information concerning the situation, and the wrong photo had also been printed, which did not depict Dusan Erceg.
It is possible that Erceg told the court in Zagreb last Thursday about what he had related in his dramatic letter to the Nacional editorial office. Erceg sent it to Nacional at great risk, not counting on getting out of prison earlier. It was an unselfish and courageous act by a man who did not use his knowledge concerning the assassination of Ivo Pukanic even in the dangerous situation he was exposed to in prison to barter for his status as a prisoner or for privileges.
During the time Erceg spent in prison, Nacional did not, for his safety, publish the letter. Nacional is now publishing the letter in its entirety.
Dear sir,
As per our agreement I am writing you this letter, with my apologies if it disturbs your planned obligations. Before tackling the topic that is the cause of this letter I feel that it is necessary that I inform you why I am here. Namely, verdict no. K-258-04, handed down by the District Court of Novi Sad, declared me guilty because I, as this court concluded, committed the criminal act of fraud whereby I caused damages to a person who was an external associate of the Serbian National Security Service in the Stuttgart area, because he, as he claimed, gave me 18,900 euro for two vehicles that I failed to deliver, as a result of which I was sentenced to 8 years in prison and a security measure of deportation for a period of 10 years. Whether this verdict is based on law, or is the result of the needs of the clero-nationalist authorities ruling Serbia led by Vojislav Kostunica, with aim of preventing my further activities, after a photo of Dr. Radovan Karadzic, i.e. "Mister Dabic" was found on my computer during a search of premises in Novi Sad where I was properly registered as my temporary place of residence on 31 March 2004, shall be decided by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where the case of Erceg vs. Serbia has been filed under number 39990-08.
The cited verdict was modified at the second instance to a 6 year sentence, and the security measure was annulled. They also found e-mails from Clint Williamson, the US ambassador for war crimes issues and from some other officials from the Hague prosecution on the computer, and so forth. When the verdict came into force I was sent to the penitentiary in Sremska Mitrovica. Immediately upon my arrival and internment in the second pavilion, which has a cell system of serving sentences, when it was learned that I was from Croatia, I was told that there was a dangerous fellow in the pavilion who, as they said, worked for some security services in Croatia, and they told me his name was Robert Matanic. A few days later this fellow approached me and made my acquaintance. For a few weeks, I listened to his tales, and when I had heard enough I told him that there was no need for him to lie to me, because he had no connections to any security services, but that I had no intention of telling the others that he was spinning yarns.
Once he had, after a time, seen that I had not revealed that he was not being sincere about his past, he became considerate, mindful, but tended, when he spoke with me, that there be no one else around, to preserve his reputation. He bewailed that he had twice been put in solitary confinement for having a mobile phone, that he trusted no one and that he needed a mobile phone (the spring of 2006). I lent him my mobile phone, but three minutes after taking the phone from me he was taken to the administrative building of the penitentiary. The following day when he returned the mobile phone I immediately destroyed it. Three hours later my cell was searched. I kept quiet about it all, being mindful of what I said before them. A month later I was seriously injured by the guards, which has left lasting consequences. After three months of isolation and formal medical treatment I was reinstated to regular treatment. I was immediately informed that Matanic was going to the administrative building all the time and that he constantly had visits. One day, quite annoyed, I called him to my cell and after seriously threatening him compelled him to reveal the game he was up to. He convinced me that it was nothing against me and that he was running some kind of deal with someone from the Serbian National Security with the aim of striking a deal that he not be sent to Bulgaria.
I checked it out and received confirmation that he was being visited by some hot shots from the Serbian National Security. After a time, in late 2006 or early 2007 (I cannot be more precise now) an article was published in Nacional about a Croatian citizen murdered in Bulgaria. The article made very serious accusations about Matanic and the murders in Bulgaria. Robert was nervous for days. A few days later he said "Remember, Pukanic will be killed, because he stirs up the shit all the time". I told him to leave newspapers and journalists alone. In this walk along the promenade we were joined by Milos Perunicic, and Matanic said "Pukanic crapped all over his friends (Perunicic's), and they are powerful people," to which I told Robert to watch what he says, and at which point Perunicic, who is an eccentric character, jumped in saying "Watch what? He should be done in," obviously alluding to Pukanic. From that point on the two were inseparable. They even had their visits at the same time. In the sex-visits card Matanic puts a girl from Pozarevac from the milieu around Joca Amsterdam. In time, this same Matanic became untouchable for the official staff. He was indulged like a bride after the wedding.
But some changes in the Serbian Justice Ministry disrupted his plans, and he learned that he would in fact be handed over. He intensified his socialising with Milos Perunicic and Miroljub Kocic, who was in for a bank heist in Beocin he did with Zeljko Milovanovic, and a certain Nicic, who assumed a part of the organisation concerning a planned Matanic jailbreak, and then ratted out the organisation after which Matanic is unexpectedly apprehended in his cell and taken into total isolation in pavilion 3, from where he was delivered to Bulgaria. You probably know the circumstances of his release from Bulgaria, so there is no need to write about it here.
A half hour after the news was announced on TV that Ivo Pukanic had been assassinated, a member of an organised crime outfit said to me in the hallway "It looks like that countryman of yours Matanic whacked Pukanic." I responded to this by asking him how he knew that, to which he responded "We just talked now with Lepoglav," (which means that there had been a phone call between those convicted of organised crime here and convicts in Lepoglav prison).
And a few months after the assassination, a convict from Montenegro, who has Croatian citizenship, said to me "Dado, brother, it looks like that Matanic is a big deal." I asked him what had led him to conclude that, to which he said "Here, look" and played a recording on a mobile phone on which Matanic is on the seaside with some people from Montenegro that are very well known. I put some thing together and protested sharply about the tacit approval of competent persons as regards contacts between convicts in Lepoglav and this institution. This produced some results, and gave me better conditions to collect information:
- I found out that Z. M. [Zeljko Milovanovic] avoided arrest in Doboj thanks to someone from the police of the Republika Srpska
- It was confirmed to me that Z. M. had done jobs for the authorities in Republika Srpska
- A month after the assassination, a bigwig from Laktas, the top man in the executive government [Republika Srpska Prime Minister Milorad Dodik] met in Foce with a man from Montenegro who has the utmost confidence of M. D. [Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Dukanovic]
- M. D. does not approve that Z. M. takes refuge in Montenegro as was allegedly agreed upon
- When Z. M. learned that the plan had been changed and that he could not go to Montenegro he slipped out of control and began blackmailing
- A decision was made that he be promised everything, so that he could be reached physically with the aim of his liquidation
- He came to Belgrade, but the fellow that was arrested from among the people around J. A. [Joca Amsterdam] betrayed him
- What Z. M. requested from the boss is not fit for paper.
And the latest discovery:
- A member of the security service from Remetinec prison travelled recently to Veternik (near Novi Sad) and met with a guard from this institution, and the topic of discussion was Robert Matanic and Milos Perunicic.
Dear sir,
I appreciate that you will value my fairness and will not take measures that would further endanger my life, which is seriously threatened by members of organised crime groups and by those convicted of crimes at Ovcara, and who are here around me. I ask you to exercise discretion, because that is the way to reveal it all and for you to meet a person who knows all, from J. A. upwards, and who, by my indirect knowledge, wishes to offer their cooperation.
Please exercise caution, because one of the hit men of the group that is evidently behind this assassination is Vesko Vukotic, once a National Security hit man, from whom I have heard much, but is simply not fit to write. And you should know that the Montenegrin police is, in this case, on the side of the group behind the assassination. As far as our direct contact is concerned, I would certainly like to speak through a trusted person, but that person cannot be from Serbia, because I have been burned too many times as regards this topic to trust anyone in Serbia. So much for this time. In peace and goodwill accept my sincere greetings! Goodbye! Dado.
