PRESIDENT OF SBB

Radončić: After 30 years, I can reveal a secret connection to Azem

The interview with Azem Vlasi, which was done through a lawyer, was perceived as a serious disgrace for Milošević's security forces, a disgrace for the Counterintelligence Service, the police and the guard services

E. T.

Radončić and the Vlasi: Political victims. Avaz

The president of SBB, Fahrudin Radončić, posted on his Facebook profile.

You can read his full post below:

-Today's interview with Azem Vlasi, a well-known Kosovo politician and lawyer, in "Dnevni avaz", reminded B&H public again about him, as a very important figure in the Yugoslav outcome. And, one of the first great political victims of Milošević's criminal regime.

Let me remind you that the "Balkan butcher" put him in a very strict one-year prison. In addition to the unprecedented harangue, he is accused of Albanian separatism, breaking up Yugoslavia, organizing thousands of Kosovo miners, who had closed themselves in deep pits demanding his release, and other serious alleged crimes.


Front page of "Danas" publishedd on March 27th, 1990: Interview with Azem Vlasi was a world exclusive. Archive

In the cult Zagreb weekly magazine "Danas" that was then printed in circulations of up to 300,000 copies, I managed to publish an interview with him on March 27th, 1990. And that, from a strictly guarded prison.

It was a world exclusive.

After that, as expected, because journalistic freedoms were not at the level of today, I was taken to the police to confess to them how I managed to get into his cell, who let me in, who was the organizer, etc.

Of course, like many colleagues in similar situations, I said nothing.

However, after 30 years, I can uncover the secret of how that famous interview came about.

Rajko Danilović, one of Belgrade's most famous lawyers and an excellent intellectual who defended many political prisoners in the former Yugoslavia, was also Vlasi's lawyer.

I agreed with him that he, hiding from the guards submits my questions hidden in the lawyer's documents and that Azem would write his answers by hand in the following days.

And, again through Danilović, return the answers to me. With the help of Nadira Vlasi, Azem's wife and a very famous journalist of the then "Vjesnik", the answers reached me and I took them, in their apartment, in Priština.

The interview was sent by fax immediately from Priština to the "Danas" editorial office. All the world media reported it!

This was perceived as a severe disgrace to Milošević's security forces, a disgrace for the Counterintelligence Service, the police and the guard services.

In addition, the Chetnik media declared me a traitor, and a separatist promoter and accomplice.

Criminal charges were also filed for my help in breaking up Yugoslavia!?

Those traumas were left behind, and I continued to write against Milošević's policies. Vlasi became a lawyer.


Statement by Azem Vlasi for "Dnevni avaz" published on January 26th, 2016: Inadmissible political indictment. Archive

Yet, as is often the case in life, 25 years after his arrest, Azem found himself in a position to publicly defend me and provide moral support.

As a lawyer, on January 26th, 2016., he directly called my trial in Sarajevo an inadmissible political indictment and gave several other elaborations in the same sense.

That is why politicians and journalists of my generation - who were shamefully silent at the time or even supported Milošević - who stupidly try to falsify my pre-war, war and post-war past in their yellow portals seem sad to me today.