Post by CrepedCrusader on Mar 2, 2021 18:43:04 GMT
A reporter set out to investigate the death of his friend, a Serb. The official story is that the man committed suicide, though there is doubt surrounding the story. The reporter thinks his friend, who he knew as a good man, may have been murdered by his own side for protecting his Muslim neighbors. But the deeper he digs, the more troubling things he learns about his friend, who was a sniper for the Serbs. (From what I could find, I believe this story was originally published in September, 1996.)
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Faces of Mercy, Faces of Hate
Correspondent: Michael Montgomery
Producer: Stephen Smith
My friend Predrag Bundalo was waiting for a cup of coffee when a bullet, fired at point-blank range, killed him. He was sitting on the enemy's couch.
Predrag was a Serbian fighter in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Grbavica. Everyone called him by his nickname, "Gaga." On the eve of his 36th birthday, May 24, 1993, Gaga stopped to visit an elderly Muslim woman in her apartment. He planned to leave the war zone the next day to visit his ailing brother, who was battling leukemia in Belgrade, Serbia. Gaga never made it out of the woman's apartment alive.
The Muslim was never arrested. The gun disappeared. The Serb army called it a suicide. Some of Gaga's friends whispered a different theory: Gaga had been killed by fellow Serbs for aiding Muslims in his neighborhood.
I spent three years attempting to find out what happened to Gaga during the Bosnian war, what role he played in the butchery, why and how he died. I wanted to find Gaga's killer. I also hoped to grasp why ordinary Serbs fought against their neighbors and former friends in a city I had known for ten years.
The Gaga I knew possessed a compassionate, easy spirit. He was a mountain climber and amateur photographer. I assumed he remained essentially the same during the war.
After my long investigation, a new image of Gaga emerged like a print in his photographer's developing tray. It was my friend's face, but it wore an expression I did not recognize.
Correspondent: Michael Montgomery
Producer: Stephen Smith
My friend Predrag Bundalo was waiting for a cup of coffee when a bullet, fired at point-blank range, killed him. He was sitting on the enemy's couch.
Predrag was a Serbian fighter in the Sarajevo neighborhood of Grbavica. Everyone called him by his nickname, "Gaga." On the eve of his 36th birthday, May 24, 1993, Gaga stopped to visit an elderly Muslim woman in her apartment. He planned to leave the war zone the next day to visit his ailing brother, who was battling leukemia in Belgrade, Serbia. Gaga never made it out of the woman's apartment alive.
The Muslim was never arrested. The gun disappeared. The Serb army called it a suicide. Some of Gaga's friends whispered a different theory: Gaga had been killed by fellow Serbs for aiding Muslims in his neighborhood.
I spent three years attempting to find out what happened to Gaga during the Bosnian war, what role he played in the butchery, why and how he died. I wanted to find Gaga's killer. I also hoped to grasp why ordinary Serbs fought against their neighbors and former friends in a city I had known for ten years.
The Gaga I knew possessed a compassionate, easy spirit. He was a mountain climber and amateur photographer. I assumed he remained essentially the same during the war.
After my long investigation, a new image of Gaga emerged like a print in his photographer's developing tray. It was my friend's face, but it wore an expression I did not recognize.
Before the War
I FIRST MET GAGA IN 1984 during the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. I was a wayward college student searching for exotica. Gaga was a bon vivant. We became friends through our love of mountains. With him as my guide, I also trekked through Sarajevo's frenetic cafe life. Gaga lived each day as a separate adventure. He bounced around from job to job, only putting much effort into his real interests--mountain climbing, photography, and good times.
There was a brief, unhappy marriage. And he drank too much, especially after undergoing surgery on an ulcer. Gaga had the lean build of a serious hiker, an easy grin, and soft brown eyes that quickly made friends. His mustache and goatee would appear and disappear so often that his face never looked the same in photographs--a mutability that's eerie in retrospect.
Three years after our first meeting, I returned to Yugoslavia as a graduate student. My friendship with Gaga deepened. It was Gaga who hauled my spirits out of a deep depression. With Gaga, I set out to master the highest peaks in the Balkans. On hot summer days we roamed the cool, forested mountains ringing Sarajevo--Jahorina, Bjelasnica, Treskavica and others.
It was only in our last encounter, in 1991, that I realized something that had gone unmentioned in all our talks, but that would mark Gaga for the short time remaining in his life. He was a Serb. Yes, a Sarajevan, a Bosnian, a mountain climber, a photographer, son of communist partisans, my close friend-all of these things.
But Gaga was also a Serb. When war came to Sarajevo that was all that seemed to matter.
War Begins
GAGA LIVED IN ONE OF THE MANY drab, concrete apartment buildings that blight the Sarajevo neighborhood of Grbavica. The place is just a pistol shot from Sarajevo's historic center, joined by bridges over the Miljacka river.
On May 2, 1992, Bosnian Serb troops swept down into Grbavica, and prepared for an all-out assault on the city. Hundreds of civilians were killed, thousands of non-Serbs were forced to leave. It was the beginning of a campaign that became known, insidiously, as "ethnic cleansing."
A friend says Gaga initially sneered at the Serb Army's demand that all Serb men take up arms. His attitude changed quickly after a young Serb fighter shoved a pistol in his mouth and ordered him to fight or die.
At the time I was a journalist covering the collapse of Yugoslavia for the London Daily Telegraph. I was forced to report from the government-held side of Sarajevo. Gaga vanished from my view behind the front line.
I later learned that Gaga was armed with an AK-47 automatic rifle and ordered to a strategically critical apartment tower across the river from the Holiday Inn hotel, which was my base throughout the war. The gunfire I dodged constantly may have been from Gaga's weapon.
I've wondered obsessively over the years if Gaga ever made me his target. But without a scope, there's no way he could have discerned me from any other pedestrian.
The war prevented me from gathering more facts. Muslims in Grbavica were too frightened to talk, and the Serbs too angry and violent. Only after the Dayton accords and the siege ended could I move about freely. I picked up plenty of rumors, but the Serb investigators and their official reports were long-since gone.
Gaga Is Dead
FOR A YEAR I witnessed the civilian slaughter in Sarajevo and the city's slow strangulation. Though I sought to keep my emotional distance as a journalist and outsider, it was clear to me from the first day of the war on which side I stood as a human being. I had heard that Gaga was fighting with the Serbs--fighting against the Sarajevo we once shared. The rumors troubled and saddened me.
As a journalist, I was able to cross the battle lines to see Gaga, but I couldn't bring myself to make the trip.
In July, 1993 I finally visited Serb-held Grbavica. I asked around about Gaga--the neighborhood is a small enough place--but everyone feigned ignorance. One Serb commander acted as if he had never heard of Gaga, though I knew this to be a lie. Then the commander remembered, oh yes, Gaga had been killed by a sniper.
By now suspicious, I asked to see the army's death register. It exposed another lie. The hand-printed ledger said Predrag Bundalo died of a single gunshot wound to the head, an apparent suicide of "undetermined circumstances."
When I asked more questions I was told to leave Grbavica.
A mutual friend in the Bosnian Serb headquarters of Pale hinted that Gaga had been murdered.
"They're lying, all of them," M. said. "Gaga didn't kill himself, someone killed him. Why the hell would the pistol be missing if he killed himself? No one wants to talk about it because they know the ugly truth."
"Why would anyone murder my friend?" I asked.
"Ask the Muslims. His neighbors. Gaga was protecting them. There were a lot of people who weren't happy with that."
More Questions
I PAID A SURREPTITIOUS VISIT to Gaga's Muslim neighbor, Fikreta Ramic, in whose apartment he had died. Fikreta is an elderly Muslim woman with a slight limp and sharp, light-blue eyes. She invited me in but was clearly frightened.
"It's just like the commander told you," she said in monotone. "Gaga killed himself. He was sitting in my living room. I left to make coffee and then heard a shot. I ran to a neighbor's shouting 'Gaga is dead. He's shot himself.' I never went into the room until they took his body away."
"He was good," she added, almost as an afterthought. "He helped me and others. Except for when he was drunk. Then no one could control him."
Fikreta told me that Gaga intervened when Serb police harassed her and her daughter, and that he brought them valuable provisions like coffee and cigarettes.
She confided that she was preparing to flee to the Muslim (government-controlled) side. I agreed to smuggle some of her possessions across the battle lines and deliver them to a friend. I didn't see her again. In March, 1996, Serbs torched Fikreta's apartment when they withdrew from Grbavica.
This brief encounter, Fikreta's nervous gestures, the mystery of Gaga's death--these things would haunt me for the next two years.
The Investigation Resumes
I QUIT MY JOB at the Daily Telegraph in January, 1995 and left the Balkans for San Francisco. Gaga followed like a stowaway, slipping into my thoughts and dreams without invitation or warning.
By the time I returned to Bosnia in May, 1996, most Serbs had fled the areas around Sarajevo. Fearing Serb thugs and Muslim revenge, they followed in the wake of a negotiated withdrawal of the Bosnian Serb army under the Dayton peace accords. Serbs burned many of Grbavica's buildings in a scorched-earth policy driven by spite.
Roaming Grbavica freely for the first time since the war began, I found strange clues about Gaga's life and death. I found some of his possessions dumped in heaps in a gutted flat, one floor below the apartment where he had died. Among the litter, I uncovered old photographs of the two of us standing in the mountains above Sarajevo.
Across town, I found Fikreta living among refugees. No longer living in fear of Serb retaliation, she described a shocking new side of Gaga. She told me how Gaga looted Muslim homes throughout Grbavica and sold the goods for booze. Gaga would terrorize Muslims with mock assassinations, shooting his pistol at their heads and missing by millimeters. He pitched hand grenades off balconies at people below.
With Fikreta and other Muslims listening, he boasted to Serb friends about torturing Muslim prisoners. He even shot and slightly wounded Fikreta's daughter--with whom some say he was in love.
These stories were corroborated by others--Muslims and Serbs--who were in Grbavica at the time.
I had also heard credible reports that Gaga was a sniper. To me, this was the most troubling detail of all, because Serb snipers killed more than 1,000 civilians during the siege, including 300 children according to Bosnian government figures.
Graveyard
IT TOOK TIME TO FIND GAGA among the lovingly-tended rows of Bosnian Serb graves. The wooden cross marking his plot had rotted and toppled over. I visited the grave with Gaga's brother, Misha. We were met by Gaga's friend Zoran, who fought with him on the front line in Ozrenska Street.
We bought a new cross from the besotted caretaker and Zoran carefully painted Gaga's name on it. We sipped a traditional toast of brandy, pouring some on the grave for Gaga.
Misha and Zoran both insisted that Gaga's malicious behavior was fueled by drink--they blamed his violence against Muslim civilians solely on alcohol.
"He was a double person," Zoran said. "Sober...if you needed a hand, he'd give you any help necessary. But when he was drunk, everyone ran from him. He was simply terrible."
On the ride back to his wretched refugee hostel in the mountains, Misha offered more revealing comments about Gaga, and the attitudes the brothers apparently shared.
"If Gaga had changed so much as you say, he would have killed all the Muslims," Misha ranted. "One had to keep them in a state of fear, they were that kind of people. You give them your hand, they break off your whole arm."
Self Portrait
ZORAN INVITED ME OVER FOR COFFEE to talk about Gaga. He showed me a photo of Gaga, the first I'd seen showing him during the war. The image horrified me.
My friend stood with a high-powered rifle on his shoulder, peering though an optical scope, his finger on the trigger. It was a self-portrait, and Gaga was posing as a sniper. Zoran called the photo Gaga's souvenir of the war.
Two things struck me: First, Gaga's idealized image of himself was as a sniper aiming down into Sarajevo. Second, he looked no more impressive than a ragged thug with a big gun.
This man, I told myself, was no friend of mine.
The Image Darkens
THE WORLD AND MY PAST UNRAVEL around me. Gaga is a stranger, our life together an illusion. All my efforts to recover my lost friend's honor failed.
What if the majority of Gaga's actions during the war were tolerable, what we might call normal? How should that be measured against the terror he unleashed on his neighbors or the people he targeted with his sniper's rifle? How do we measure morality in war?
Was Gaga killing civilians?
No one dared to answer the question. His brother, Misha, told me Gaga bragged of killing 50 people. But he insisted they were fighters. At the same time, Misha admitted he had lectured Gaga against killing women and children, a clear indication that he, too, believed Gaga was out of control.
Ozrenska Street
SOMEWHERE ON THE SLOPE below Ozrenska Street sits an abandoned bunker where Gaga saw his close wartime friend Dejan die from a sniper shot to the back. I was told that Gaga blamed himself for Dejan's death, because he neglected to close the curtain that shielded the bunker's door from the enemy's view.
It appears Ozrenska was Gaga's position when he decided to exact revenge as a freelance sniper. His comrades say Gaga was never an officially-deployed sniper. He used a powerful, old-model rifle he obtained himself and fitted with a scope.
Could Gaga have preyed on civilians in Sarajevo from his perch in Ozrenska?
I toured the former battle zone with Muhamed Gafic, a Muslim, and one of Gaga's many pre-war mountaineer friends. Gafic is deputy commander of the Bosnian police special forces, an expert on tactics such as sniping. He led me through former Serb trenches carved from the muddy hillside below Ozrenska. We stepped carefully; the place is strewn with land mines.
Wandering amidst the rubble, we found the area where Gaga was stationed. There is a direct sight line into a Sarajevo neighborhood where scores of civilians died from sniper fire.
A Bosnian Serb official I know--Gaga's former sister-in-law--gave me some photographs Gaga shot in Ozrenska. I searched through them for more clues to Gaga's state of mind.
There are grainy images taken through gun holes cut in cement walls. There is a shot of Dejan gripping his machine gun. There are shots of Dejan's funeral procession.
After Dejan's death, Gaga carried both the M-48 sniper's rifle and the AK-47 whenever he served on the front line. Gafic says he did not need the bolt-action sniper's gun for combat, the Kalasnikov worked far better.
Nor did he need its optical site--binoculars would suffice. Such a gun gives added power and prestige on the front line, said one Serbian fighter. It is also an extremely precise weapon.
Reconstructing May 24, 1993
FRIENDS SAY GAGA was always joking around on the front line--the kind of sociable, high spirits I remember.
Why would he kill himself?
Was he disturbed over the kind of person he'd become? Was he morose after Dejan's death? It is possible he was distraught about Misha's cancer and depressed that his ride the next day to see Misha in Belgrade fell through.
I've become almost certain that when Gaga stopped at Fikreta's flat that evening he had every intention of leaving alive. Witnesses who saw Gaga earlier that evening say he was sober. Fikreta says he knocked on her door at 10:30, somewhat drunk. She said he seemed scuffed and rattled. He told her he'd been in a fight with a fellow Serb fighter, one known to traffic in stolen goods.
Fikreta was in the kitchen making coffee. When she heard the shot, why would she run directly to a neighbor without looking at Gaga first?
Officially, the single bullet that killed Gaga entered his right temple and exited through the top of his head, shattering the back of his skull. But a police detective told a friend that the bullet entered his forehead execution-style.
And was Gaga's pistol missing when police arrived? Both a Serb neighbor and the Serb military commander say it was found next to Gaga's slumped body. Fikreta said that a second neighbor had taken the pistol, drawing further suspicion on her from the police.
The more I spoke with the people involved, the less I believed their suicide theory. They seemed inordinately concerned that their separate stories matched up.
It is possible that the people in Gaga's building killed him to end his campaign of terror. Perhaps his looting partner killed him in a money dispute and threatened building residents.
Only one thing is clear to me: Gaga's soul was dead long before.
Conclusion
I WAS STUNNED TO DISCOVER that the Bosnian War Crimes Commission had investigated Gaga as a suspected war criminal. By coincidence, the head of the commission, a Muslim lawyer named Bekir Gavrankapitanovic, lived in Gaga's building and knew my friend before the war.
"We have an expression in Bosnia," Gavrankapitanovic explained, "if you want to judge a man, see how he would govern for five minutes if given absolute power."
In Grbavica, Gaga and other Serb fighters enjoyed sudden, complete power over the Muslim civilians living among them and those across the lines in Sarajevo. These were largely untrained, undisciplined troops, not professional soldiers. There appear to have been few sanctions against human rights violations.
Under the weight of such authority, a man like Gaga has only the tensile strength of his character to resist evil, like a suspension bridge suddenly shorn of its cables, fighting against gravity. Gaga's soul collapsed.
Gaga entered war's maelstrom and like millions of people in this century did not come out alive. But unlike many victims of war, his was very much a voluntary journey, one that he could have quit at several key junctures. Perhaps he did not have the courage to run away. Perhaps he thoroughly enjoyed war, though this I doubt.
War has its own logic and momentum, it's own power and allure. As Trotsky once wrote, "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
In the end, Gaga was unable to reconcile two personae within himself. Fueled by his alcoholism, he fell to the stronger of the two. Gaga was not the only person who chose the mask of hate in Bosnia. So did many others--Serbs, Croats and Muslims. But they were not all equal, nor were they my friends.
I'll probably never sort out all the details of Gaga Bundalo's death. I no longer care if it was suicide or murder. Whoever pulled the trigger on that May evening three years ago ended a wretched, warped existence. I hate to admit it, but somehow I'm glad my friend is dead.
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Weird how things can lead you in directions you never expected. I was watching a funny review of the 1995 movie Clueless. A clip played from the movie over which the 90's song "Supermodel" was playing. I couldn't remember who sang that song, so I Googled it, which led me to the Wiki page for singer Jill Sobule. Looking through her discography, I noticed an interesting title to a song, "Vrbana Bridge", from her self-titled 1995 album. I clicked the song title and was taken to a Wiki article for a documentary called "Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo", about the death of a couple who were shot by a sniper on Vrbana Bridge in Sarajevo. A link on that page led me to a page about the infamous Sniper Alley, and that page mentioned the number of people (including children) who were killed by snipers at this dangerous intersection. I clicked the source link for this info, which took me to this particular article.