Austria came under fire earlier this month for refusing asylum to a Serbian man who turned over the infamous “Scorpion tape” to international prosecutors in The Hague.

By Sebastian Gottlieb & Vessela Evrova, Amsterdam

The video showed the Serb paramilitary Scorpions executing six Bosnian civilians in a field near Srebrenica. The tape was played in court during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and changed public opinion in Serbia drastically.

The video was made as a war time souvenir and passed around among members of the shadowy military unit. Its commander had ordered all copies destroyed but one ended up in the hands of Jovan Mirilo and in 2005 he gave the tape to the ICTY.

“The political situation in the country was almost the same as before 2000. Nationalism was greater than ever”, said Mirilo. “This was a sign for me, I had to do something, anything, that could show the world what life in Serbia is like”.

After handing over the video, Mirilo feared for his life in Serbia, where he is seen as a traitor. “I knew what kind of response the video would receive. It did not surprise me. It was to be expected because the Serbian society is still not ready to take responsibility for the past.”

Mirilo said that he received several death threats after making the film public. He fled to Austria in 2007, where he applied for political asylum. But Austria’s asylum office rejected his application for the second time on February 5th.

According to Amnesty, his request was refused on the basis of an accusation, lodged by an anonymous informant, that Mirilo is an impostor and himself a dissident member of the Scorpions. The asylum office also said that Serbia has now been deemed a safe country.

“I am not a Scorpion, and have not participated in the war”, says Mirilo. “If it had been different, Serbian authorities would have been informed. Until today no one has confirmed it.”

Mirilo immediately filed an appeal against the decision at the federal asylum court. Last Friday his lawyer Nadja Lorenz received notice that his appeal has been granted suspensive effect, meaning he won’t be expelled or deported to Serbia until the decision of the second instance. The court has six months to rule on Mirilo’s asylum request.

Lorenz told the Austrian newspaper Falter that the fact that the federal asylum office granted suspensive effect was a “very rare” decision, and says it’s possible that pressure was put upon the asylum office.

“I am not in a position to comment on the work of State authorities”, Mirilo said. “I can only say that a lot of evidence that I presented to the authorities has been ignored, altered or concealed by the administration. Therefore, I have decided to speak to the media and await the reaction of the Austrian public.”

If the federal court decides against Mirilo, he can still appeal to the Austrian constitutional court and then the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The constitutional court could repeal the second instance decision and hand the case back to the lower levels of jurisdiction.

“It is incomprehensible why the authorities handle an asylum case like this one in such a negligent way”, said Amnesty Austria’s General Secretary Heinz Patzelt. “What is being done is outright slander.”

Amnesty International has praised Mirilo for his cooperation with the ICTY. “By handing the video of the Srebrenica massacre to the UN court, Mirilo has done the right thing at the right time […] He is a political refugee in the truest sense of the word”, said Patzelt.

Amnesty credits Mirilo with helping to expose the genocide of over 7,000 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica. In 2007 he received the Austrian Bruno-Kreisky human rights award for his work.

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