Pilot who flew Milosevic on the night of his Hague extradition also flew him to Gazimestan in 1989

Photo: tangosix.rs/Dusan Atlagic

The same pilot who flew Slobodan Milosevic to Gazimestan in 1989 also took him to Tuzla after his arrest in 2001, from where he was transferred to The Hague - the well known Vladan Kosic Kos, a police colonel and since August 1, 2018, the retired commander of the Helicopter Unit of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior.

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"When Slobodan Milosevic boarded the helicopter, the pilot turned towards him and told him that he was the one who flew him to Gazimestan in 1989. The same pilot who flew him to Tuzla at the time, had also flown him to Gazimestan," said Cedomir Jovanovic, then a member of the Democratic Party and head of the DOS parliamentary group, who participated in the negotiations around Milosevic's arrest.

"Dusan Mihajlovic provided two helicopters that came to the Institute of Security. I took Milosevic to the helicopter that was supposed to take him to Tuzla. Milosevic then asked me, 'Do you know what day it is today?' I didn't know how to answer. 'You don't know? Well, you look like like you wouldn't', he told me. 'Today is Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day, major Serbian holiday)' he said. He boarded the helicopter, turned around and said: 'Bye then, brother Serbs'," Jovanovic said last night.

"They intercepted me twice and threatened to shoot me down"

Pilot Kosic's flights with Milosevic were not the only historic ones he performed. As Novosti wrote when he got retired, Kosic was the pilot of the luxury helicopter Sikorski who was flying presidents of our state. He was the pilot of the last JNA (Yugoslav Army) helicopter that left Slovenia from Brezice. Then he transferred the last one from Skopje, too. In Mostar, above Nevesinje, he made a "mid-air arrest" of a Muslim colleague who was trying to steal a helicopter. In January 1993, he was transferred from the Army to the state security agency, DB, to the Special Operations Unit.

During the war in Croatia, as a reliable officer, he was given the task of flying from Mostar to the under-siege army barracks in Zadar almost every day, bringing the soldiers mail and tapes with Yutel TV broadcasts.

"Those were troubled war days when nobody trusted anybody," said Kosic.

He did not hide that DB pilots flew in the war in Bosnia and Krajina. He said that he was twice intercepted by NATO fighters who were enforcing a no-fly zone and who threatened that they would shoot him down. During both flights, he was transporting the wounded.

"A supersonic fighter can hardly catch a helicopter. It's important that the pilot knows what he has to do. I was less afraid of NATO planes than of our smugglers. At night, they would stretch cables across the Drina River to haul goods across, and we would be 'sweeping' over the river every day. I almost got killed on that 'road' once," Kosic said.

Twice during the war, he saw a colleague in another helicopter crash in front of him. He was rescuing them... He believes, however, that death is not the worst thing in a war.

He also flew former DB chief Jovica Stanisic after his meeting in Karadjordjevo, during which he was sacked. Kosic brought Biljana Plavsic from Pale to meet with Slobodan Milosevic when she took over as head of state from Radovan Karadzic (in the Serb Republic). He remembers many secret operations, and one that people could see on TV, during the 2014 floods.

"I had never seen such floods. On the second day of the disaster, I was in one of the two helicopters that transported 2,000 people from Obrenovac to Srem in 12 hours. A record. Later, when more helicopters arrived from Hungary, Belarus, Switzerland, Italy... I commanded 20 aircraft, plus Emir Kusturica with his 'bird'. God, what a stubborn man he is, just like a flood...," Colonel Kosic told Novosti.

He has never spoken about the details of the helicopter transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to Tuzla, on Vidovdan 2001.

What is known is that it was an operation aimed to create confusion, when three different flights of three helicopters took place almost simultaneously to avoid giving away which one Milosevic was in.

(Telegraf.rs)