Bit of Biff Needed

Here’s a tragic story which is featuring in the media at the moment - a few weeks ago 17 year old Antonija Bilic was hitchhiking between and Split when she accepted a ride from a man driving a truck, and she hasn’t been seen since. I can’t find a photo of her to show you, but she is a beautiful young woman. (Tell your teenage daughters NEVER to hitchhike – even if you know that they know that, tell them again!).

Another young woman has come forward to say that she was also offered a ride by a truck driver on the same day, but declined it as she was concerned that the driver of the truck changed directions to come back and offer her a ride. (Good girl, clearly her antennas were working.)

The same truck has been recovered and forensic tests have shown that Antonija was in the truck.

The man suspected of abducting Antonija has been arrested in Bosnia after being assisted by his wife to avoid the border police between Croatia and Bosnia. She has admitted that she met him on the Croatian side of the border, gave him a wetsuit so that he could swim up the river, and met him again on the Bosnian side, cleverly having avoided the police. (Dysfunctional woman standing by her man… ) He has been charged with rape twice before - but has managed to get off on technicalities, and this is where the conversation becomes complicated, so please stop anything else that you may be doing and concentrate...

Dragan Paravinja had a Serbian passport, but now has a Croatian passport . He was charged with rape in Serbia in 2008, was caught in Croatia, but as there are no extradition laws in place between those two countries, he was not returned to Serbia to stand trial and has avoided punishment. He was accused of rape in Germany but managed to escape the country and return to Croatia.

In 2009, a Slovakian woman went missing from outside a restaurant - Dragan Paravinja was staying in the area for three months before the woman disappeared, had tried to approach both the cook and the waitress at the same restaurant, (but was spurned because they thought he was strange –some men are a bit like a hedgehog when you see them – you know instantly that you don’t want to go too near) and then was not seen again in the area after the woman disappeared. Her body was found a month later in the river – she was able to be identified by DNA samples but the body was so badly decomposed that they could not determine the cause of death. Paravinja has now been linked to this murder.

Various other women have come forward making statements concerning rape by a man of a similar description.

He is now in a cell in Bosnia, and this is where it is interesantno, while the powers that be from each country try to decide who gets a bit of him first.

He is on the Wanted List in Serbia for rape, where he has been tried but managed to escape, wanted in Slovenia, wanted in Bosnia and now is wanted for questioning in Croatia. It is like a serious game of chess, where the wrong move could allow him to go free again.

He has told the police that he served in the Serbian Army during the war, and if they pursue this matter further, he has ‘secrets’ about certain people during war that he will make public. (Records show that he did not serve in the war, and a family member described him as a kukavica. (Remember that word? It means coward - and Lazac is the word for a liar with the ‘zh’ sound on the ‘z’, but I don’t know the Croatian for ‘pants on fire’, although I have taught that phrase to Ivana next door – I thought it was necessary for her to know how to say that. Sorry….

He told the police in Bosnia that he tried to rape Antonija, couldn’t do it (??) , killed her and threw her into the river. The police in Croatia, with the help of specialist search and rescue staff from Bosnia, have scoured the river and the surrounding land and found nothing. If the decision is made to return Dragan Paravinja to Croatia, and they find no body, and he recants his confession by stating that he was under stress to confess something, then they have no firm evidence, no body, a rescinded confession - and they may have to release him.

So, what to do? The debate continues as each country wants to see justice done for crimes committed in their country. Who gets the first bite? Which justice system can be sure that any charges against him can stick? And hand up who hopes that there may be a bit of ‘biff’ whilst this charmer is in the cells…….