June 16, 1996

Police Official's Methods Raise Ethnic Fears in Bosnian Region

By MIKE O'CONNOR

EPENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- With a pitchfork skillfully fashioned from a tree branch in the ancient style, Ibro Osmanovic collected the sweet grass he was harvesting for his cow on a torn blanket. Then he swung the bundle onto his shoulder and moved up a hill to join four other peasants.

They were talking about a man whose rise in the ranks of the government of postwar Bosnia they described as so wonderful that it reflected distinction on every home in this, his native village, a place where some tools for working the land have not changed in centuries.

"He is not like those extremists on all sides who started this war," said Osmanovic, 72. "Semsudin Mehmedovic is the best of the men who will make a new Bosnia for everyone."

Others who have watched Mehmedovic closely attribute his ascent to his new office suite as police commander in this region to what they say is his role as an enforcer for the most repressive and undemocratic elements of Bosnia's governing political party.

Diplomats, NATO officers and U.N. officials who know him expressed deep concern that his wing of the party intended to increase its power by crushing the rights of ethnic minorities.

In a country that dissolved into warfare as Croats and Serbs proclaimed that they could not trust the mainly Muslim government, these officials say, Mehmedovic is a threat to peace.

As a senior police official, he is accused of having sheltered foreign Islamic fundamentalist fighters, of crushing moderate Muslim political forces and of fostering hatred between Muslims and Croats.

With his recent promotion to the post of chief law enforcement officer in an ethnically volatile region in central Bosnia, Croats in the region's capital, Zenica, report growing hostility from Muslim police officers.

While the bitter complaints from Croats that they are routinely harassed and manhandled by Mehmedovic's police forces could not be confirmed, there are established cases of authoritarian tactics.

In recent months Mehmedovic, 35, detained four European military monitors at a meeting in his office and briefly jailed a Roman Catholic priest, saying he had been criticizing government policy.

Mehmedovic rose to power as the Bosnian government struggled to survive attacks by Serbian forces and more limited attacks by Bosnian Croat troops. For the last four years, many foreign diplomats, often with Americans in the lead, have been willing to forgive extremists because Bosnian Muslims were seen to be resisting attempts at genocide.

But now, nationalist Muslim officials and recalcitrant Croats and Serbs are seen as obstacles to the accord reached last November in Dayton, Ohio.

In this part of Bosnia, Croatian and moderate Muslim officials say they got along well until Mehmedovic began to exert power after being installed as the district police chief by the governing party.

Hakija Uzicanin, a Muslim who was mayor of the city of Tesanj during part of the war said: "Muslims and Croats worked together on everything. We were like a single community." But as the head of the police, Mehmedovic led a drive to divide that community, he said.

Uzicanin was dismissed from his job as head of a state-owned factory. For several months, he said, the local Muslim military commander posted soldiers outside his home to protect him from Mehmedovic's officers. He remains isolated in his house. On the gate someone has sprayed the words, "Die, you dog."

Today, Croatian leaders say they have no contact with the new Muslim officials.

The division works against the U.S. policy of encouraging a federation between the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. The peace accord that stopped the war is based on that policy because about half of Bosnia is supposed to be administered by the Croatian-Muslim federation.

But now Croats in this area say they see no future for themselves in the federation.

In an interview, Mehmedovic rejected the label of extremist and said his police treated everyone equally. He criticized the peace accord and the federation, saying they kept most of the country out of Bosnian government control.

Diplomats with access to U.S. intelligence reports say Mehmedovic aided foreign Islamic fighters after the agreement required that they leave the country, but he said he had not helped them in any way.

Still, he said: "I'd join with the Devil to help my country. America and Britain did nothing for us. They only watched us suffering on TV."