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Sleeping Beauty

Date : 14.07.2006

THE sixth law of tabloid journalism states that any article that does not say Princess Diana was an angel made of flesh and silk is a “devastating blow” to Princes William and Harry.

And having assured us cameraman Sebastian Rich’s recent claim that he had sex with the princess was a “devastating blow” to the princes, the boys get another, er, “devastating blow”.

“OUTRAGE OF PICTURE OF DIANA DYING IN MAGAZINE,” says the front page of the Express.

“DYING DIANA PHOTO FURY,” echoes the Mirror on its cover. “SHAME ON YOU,” says the Sun on its front page.

And the news is a little grim. The Sun says that “worldwide fury” has erupted over the decision by an Italian magazine and newspaper to publish photographs of Diana after the Paris car crash.

These photos do not show Diana hailing a taxi, as conspiracy theorists suggest, but lying prone and broken. Another picture shows “harrowing autopsy drawings detailing her wounds”.

The Sun reproduces the offending page from Chi magazine but blocks out the “sickening” picture of Diana.

No paper chooses to reproduce the picture, but they have all seen it. And they want to tell us what they have seen.

The Mirror notices the shot of Diana slumped in her mangled car as a medic puts an oxygen mask over her face. The paper shows its readers a picture of the wrecked car.

The Star also has a big picture of the car. It speaks of the “gruesome” image of Diana. It hears from a source who says, “It’s morbid, sick and a massive insult to Di’s family.”

And the Star has seen those autopsy drawings. It says they indicate “serious impact to her head and chest”.

And we learn that the magazine has printed a list of what Diana had in her possession at the time. The Star dutifully tells us that Diana had a Jaeger watch, a pearl bracelet, black Versace shoes, a mobile phone and an earring.

How sick it is of the Italian magazine to dwell on such macabre detail. For shame!

But they want to explain. And we hear from the editor of Chi, Umberto Brindani. He says he published the pictures because they had never been seen before. “I found it rather tender and touching,” says he. “She is not dead in the picture but looks as if she is sleeping.”

Sleeping? Why what’s wrong with that. Perhaps we should see this picture? Just as we should see the Mail’s picture – published today – of one Petar Sutovic dying in mysterious circumstances in Belgrade.

Is he sleeping?

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Judge backs mother's mission to find truth of son's 'drugs death'
By Dominic Kennedy

The Times, October 07, 2005

Calls for an independent inquiry are being made after police pictures of a Londoner’s squalid demise in a Belgrade flat contradict the official explanation for his death

SHORTLY before his death, Petar Sutovic, a former law student, sent a studio portrait of himself to his mother with the handwritten message: “They say a picture can say 1,000 words.”

When the 25-year-old Briton died, supposedly on the bed of his Belgrade flat, investigations in Serbia and Britain initially pointed to a drug overdose. But a set of photographs of the crime scene betray clues that his mother, Susan Sutovic, a prominent London human rights lawyer representing Serbian dissidents, believes indicate that he was murdered.

The pictures, never before published, convinced a High Court judge that a British inquest may have reached the wrong conclusion by ruling out foul play.

Paul Canning, a former Scotland Yard photographic expert, has analysed the shots and spotted inconsistencies which he says suggest that the scene was staged. His chilling conclusion is that the Briton was brutally beaten before the photographs were taken but may have been pictured still alive, unconscious and about to be finished off.

Mr Sutovic, a Londoner, had gone to live in the Serbian capital after a road crash that left him severely scarred and self-conscious about his appearance. In hospital, he had been given medical morphine. His post-traumatic stress disorder required treatment at the Priory Hospital in London.

Young men with disfigured torsos attract few stares in the war-ravaged Balkans. Mr Sutovic became devoted to his Orthodox Christian faith. He visited his father’s relatives in the countryside of Montenegro, his parents having become estranged. Physically, he gained the confidence to take up boxing. While he hoped one day to complete his legal studies, he lived easily on an allowance in low-cost central Belgrade in a flat bought by his mother.

Mr Sutovic died in January last year. A Serbian post-mortem examination blamed his death on an intake of drugs. The body was flown to Heathrow for burial and arrived, unusually, fully clothed rather than wrapped in a shroud. A Home Office pathologist examined the body and concluded that no injuries could be seen externally or on further examination.

Mrs Sutovic became suspicious when her son’s housekeeper in Belgrade opened a bag of the dead man’s clothing that had been sent back by the Serbian mortuary. The clothes were heavily bloodstained. She then examined the garments in which he had been flown to Britain. Again, these items appeared to be soaked in blood.

She hired independent investigators. They discovered dirty footmarks on the legs of her son’s jeans, possible evidence that he had been kicked. In Belgrade they found spots of his blood on the bedroom wall, which indicated the possibility of a violent struggle.

In the meantime William Dolman, the North London Coroner, recorded an open verdict, giving the cause of death as morphine poisoning. His conclusion was based on a toxicological report indicating high, but not necessarily fatal, levels of the drug.

Mrs Sutovic challenged the inquest in the High Court, where Mr Justice Forbes granted her permission to apply for judicial review of a “very worrying” case. The scene photographs were decisive. The court could not, he declared, ignore “the evidence of our own eyes”.

The judge said: “Plainly, an injury to the nose and the area immediately adjacent to the nose can be seen. There was plainly a great deal of blood around his head. It was sufficient to soak through and on to the mattress.

“The coroner should have gone on and looked at this aspect of the matter more closely. Had he done so, he might have been driven to the conclusion that this young man was subdued and then killed.”

Reports from the Serbian investigation say that two men, a lodger and a friend, were in the flat on the night that Mr Sutovic died. But there are flaws. Inconsistent timings are given. A syringe is said to have been found variously in the dead man’s arm or on the floor. Drug paraphernalia, including needles and a spoon, were said to have been found.

Mrs Sutovic says that her son was a diabetic who injected insulin four times a day. Yet the British post-mortem examination found that “no apparent old or recent injection marks were seen”.

Mr Canning has spent weeks examining the pictures. “The Serbian police scene photographs clearly show that Petar was subjected to a serious assault,” he said. “The signs of injuries around the nose, side of the face and to both arms are clear evidence of this.

“I am not convinced that Petar Sutovic was dead at the time the photographs were taken. He appears unconscious. His skin has some colour, rather than the pale, waxy look of death. I think that Petar was assaulted prior to the police photographs being taken and then cleaned up and dressed ready for the photographs.

“Could it be possible that Petar sustained a further serious assault following the police scene photographs, which could explain the heavily bloodstained clothing?”

Mr Canning highlights specific damage to clothes photographed after being removed from Mr Sutovic’s body. Their condition is consistent with his having suffered a later beating.

A white Champion vest, identical to that worn by Mr Sutovic in the scene, has been dirtied, further bloodstained and ripped. Mr Sutovic’s dark trousers, which can be seen unmarked as he lies on the bed, are heavily stained. The pattern of blood on the dead man’s clothing is consistent with injuries to the lower back, but there is no suggestion of such harm on the scene pictures.

Mr Canning is also struck by the apparent speed with which a police scenes-of-crime photographer arrived in the middle of the night. “It seems very strange to me that the police were there in breakneck time,” he said.

Mrs Sutovic believes that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has let her down in its handling of her son’s death. The former Labour MP Tony Benn has written to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, asking for an independent inquiry. “She was gravely misled about the circumstances of her son’s death and those responsible failed in their duty,” Mr Benn said. “I am convinced that the case has to be looked at afresh by those who were not directly involved.”

The Foreign Office said: “We are offering all the consular support we can to Mrs Sutovic. What we can’t do is investigate a case in another country. The Serbian authorities have ruled on the case and we have to accept their ruling.”

LIFE AND DEATH

August 1, 1979 Born in London

1998 Law student. Obtains flying licence. Diagnosed diabetic

July 14, 2000 Seriously injured in road accident in Israel. Later moves to Serbia

January 27, 2004 Dies in Belgrade

September 27, 2004 Coroner records open verdict: cause of death, morphine poisoning

March 11 2005 Mr Justice Forbes in the High Court gives Mr Sutovic’s mother Susan permission for a judicial review

LEGAL OPINION

“The fact that my pathologist could not find injection marks is only one factor in the whole of the evidence adduced. I pointed out at an early stage that inquiries into deaths abroad are difficult and often unsatisfactory. I was not prepared to allow the inquests to become a forum for extraneous matters or wild speculation.”

William Dolman, North London Coroner, letter to Susan Sutovic

“She was not raising fanciful points and there are areas of concern. This was a British citizen. Yes, it was abroad but if these non-fanciful points raise the question as to the circumstances of death suggesting that a crime has been committed, then I think at least arguably questions of inconvenience and cost do not really carry much weight.”

Mr Justice Forbes, High Court

A British man dies in Belgrade. Police say it was an overdose. His body is returned to Britain and our officials say the same. But in Serbia, David James Smith found compelling evidence of murder and a cover-up — and the trail leads all the way back to London

It was January 27 last year, and the loss of her older son was almost more than Susan Sutovic could bear. The terrible formalities then begin — the arrangements for Petar's body to be flown back to Heathrow, where it was collected and delivered to a public mortuary at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow. Susan going there to see her son and noticing the distorted shape of his nose, which she pointed out to the coroner's officer who had accompanied her there. It looked as if it had been broken by an injury — that's not my son's nose.

From then on, nothing made sense and Susan became possessed by the growing conviction that her son had been murdered. She thought of almost nothing else, abandoning her career, herself and everything, to the single, consuming aim of finding out how Petar had died. To date she has spent over £100,000 on forensic experts, lawyers, court costs and private detectives. The more she investigates, the more certain Susan is that the full truth has not come out. And even if her theory that the Serbian secret police have been covering up his murder appears far-fetched, when you hear and see some of the things that have gone on, you can't help wondering if she's right.

Even before his death, Petar's brief life had been shadowed by tragedy. Five years earlier he had been a fit, handsome teenager studying law in London. Then, in 1999, he had been transformed by type-A diabetes, which his doctors had diagnosed. Forced to inject himself with insulin four times a day, he found it hard to cope. He suffered from anxiety and depression, and took brief refuge in the use of recreational drugs. The family had faced other difficulties with illness too, and so, in July 2000, Susan organised a holiday for them all — Petar, his brother, Marko, their grandmother and Susan herself — in Israel. During the holiday, Petar was knocked down by a lorry while crossing the road. In intensive care, his internal injuries were said to be worse than those that had killed Princess Diana; he was given a 5% chance of survival.

After a series of operations that left scarring on his chest and substantial areas of skin-grafting around his right shoulder, Petar began to recover. He turned to the Serbian Orthodox faith and spent time at a monastery in Greece, also getting a tattoo of a saint on his upper left arm. When he returned to Britain, he continued to suffer the psychological after-effects of the accident, and his mother sent him to the Priory to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Susan had been born in Croatia but had lived in London since childhood and eventually became a solicitor, starting her own practice 15 years ago. Her firm, Sutovic & Hartigan, in Acton, had become well known for its human-rights work. In her time, she had represented some exiled political opponents of the hardline regime led by Slobodan Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia. She never doubted that this had made her enemies in the region, especially among Serbian nationalists. It had also given her a public profile among Britain's growing expatriate Balkan community. She had been spat at in the streets of London in the late 1990s, after being quoted speaking out against Milosevic.

In spring 2003 she bought a flat in Belgrade, and she and Petar started to redecorate it. It was a time of relative calm in the Balkans, and Belgrade was suddenly a lively city. Property was still cheap and the central two-bedroom flat, which had once housed army officers, cost just £30,000.

After a decade of civil war and genocide, as the former Yugoslavia disintegrated, Milosevic was now on trial for war crimes in the Hague. But Susan knew people had long memories and, after Petar's death, recalled the young Serbian colleague who had once asked her if she thought Petar was safe in Belgrade, given her reputation. The colleague's mother, Susan later discovered, was a high-ranking official in Serbian state security. She wondered if the colleague had been sent as some kind of spy. Her suspicions increased when she discovered, later, that the mother had visited the scene of Petar's death, within hours of it happening.

The apartment door had been heavily reinforced by a previous occupant and Petar used to complain it was oppressive, like a prison-cell door, and would often leave it unlocked when he was in. He began living there, trying some business enterprises; there were various girlfriends and occasional parties. Petar had a pet rottweiler, Laki.

Back in Belgrade, three weeks before his death, Petar took in a new flatmate, Sergey Nesic, a chef from Australia. Sergey claims to have been in the flat with Petar on the night of his death, along with a mutual friend, Zoki Cupac, another Australian trying to make a new life in Belgrade, who describes himself as a businessman.

Initially, drugs were not even mentioned in relation to Petar's death. His body came back from Belgrade with a death certificate saying he had died of heart failure. Susan's first thought was that he had died after lapsing into a diabetic coma.

Unusually, although the body arrived back at Heathrow and Susan lives in Acton, the responsibility for an inquest was handed over to Dr William Dolman, based miles away in Hornsey, whose normal jurisdiction is north, not west, London. Even more puzzling is that there was contact between Dr Dolman's office and officials in Belgrade on the day of Petar's death. The coroner initially denied that this took place, but it has been verified by the Foreign Office.

According to the Coroners' Rules, Dr Dolman should have provided a written briefing for the pathologist, Dr Michael Rufus Crompton, who carried out the post-mortem at Northwick Park Hospital on February 2, 2004. No such document has ever been presented to Susan. There is no way of knowing if the pathologist was even aware that Susan suspected Petar's nose might have been broken.

In Susan's view, Dr Crompton's post-mortem might best be described as perfunctory. "No injuries were seen," it states. And then, despite the fact that "no apparent old or recent injection marks were seen" and despite the fact that he could not have carried out any toxicology tests on the day, he gave an immediate cause of death as morphine poisoning. At the time of the inquest, Dr Crompton was 72 and had officially retired some years earlier. He was working part time, carrying out post-mortems for Dr Dolman, until his full and final retirement last October.

Susan has identified a graphology expert who has cast some doubt about the post-mortem report and the signature at the end of it. Susan does not understand how he can have conducted the postmortem and not seen such obvious injuries. She even doubts he carried it out. Dr Crompton was not prepared to discuss the case with The Sunday Times Magazine, but did insist that he had conducted the post-mortem. Brent council is currently carrying out an internal inquiry into the post-mortem. Susan made an official complaint to the council after being told that much of Petar's post-mortem had been performed by an unqualified mortuary technician.

Susan still can't understand how Dr Crompton so readily ascribed Petar's death to "morphine poisoning". She believes information from Belgrade must have been passed down the line that led Crompton to jump to conclusions and fail to do proper tests or produce a full report.

It turns out that there had been an earlier post-mortem, in Belgrade at the Institute of Forensic Medicine on January 28. It was the institute that had been in touch with Dr Dolman's office in London on January 27. Four doctors put their name to this post-mortem, but one of them has already told Susan he never saw her son's body or had anything to do with it. During that post-mortem the heart and pancreas were taken from Petar's body and not returned.

The Sunday Times
April 03, 2005

Serbian death riddle of son of top British rights lawyer

THE British government is to ask its ambassador in Serbia to investigate the mysterious death in Belgrade of a young Briton whose mother is a prominent human rights lawyer representing victims of persecution in the former Yugoslavia.

The Serbian police said Petar Sutovic, 24, who grew up in Britain and was trying to set up a chain of coffee shops in Belgrade, died from a drug overdose at his family’s flat in the suburb of Dorcol in January last year.

His mother, Susan Sutovic, has spent the past year unraveling a baffling series of contradictions in the official reports, and has now been granted a judicial review in which her lawyers will attempt to have Dolman’s verdict quashed and a fresh inquest held.

Worried by telephone conversations with her son in the weeks before he died, she believes he was murdered and that Serbian state security officials covered it up.

She passed photographs of his body and the scene of his death to several forensic experts, all of whom believe he was killed. The photographs clearly show that Petar Sutovic suffered severe facial injuries; his clothes and bed were badly bloodstained; and there was blood on the apartment’s walls.

The Belgrade police have never produced a syringe they claim he used to inject himself.

At her London home last week, Susan Sutovic was distraught at the official resistance to reopening her son’s case, both in Britain and Serbia. “I’ve represented so many people for their rights and mine are being ignored. It’s so disgusting,” she said.

After spending nearly £50,000 on her own investigations, she is winning support. Amnesty International has issued a detailed report on the basis of her findings, which also concludes that Petar was probably murdered.

The government is also changing its tune. “I’m very concerned at what I’ve heard of this case,” said Denis MacShane, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the Balkans. “Every parent must know every detail of how a child died. I will ask my ambassador in Belgrade for a full report.”

According to his mother, Petar Sutovic — who went to school in London — was loving his new life in Belgrade. The coffee shop chain was among several business ideas he had. He had just been skiing and on the night of his death, January 27, he had sent text messages home with no indication that anything was amiss.

In the days before, however, Susan Sutovic said she had been worried by a phone call in which he described how five armed police officers had entered the flat, asking if they could use the telephone. He believed he was being watched by intelligence agents, telling her: “The guy next door is state security. He knows everything about you. He frightens me.”

Sutovic was also alarmed by a conversation she had in London with a Serbian acquaintance who had a relative in the Serbian interior ministry. “He asked me why I wasn’t worried about Petar being in Belgrade,” she said.

Her worst fears were confirmed when she saw her son’s body on its return to Britain on January 30. She noticed his nose was badly misshapen, a fact not mentioned by either forensic report.

Then she found that the clothes removed from her son’s body before an autopsy were badly bloodstained. Later, when she traveled to Belgrade, she found they did not match the clothes he was wearing in the photographs of the death scene taken by police. But these clearly showed injuries to his nose and ear, and burn marks on his right wrist.

“He’s been murdered; there’s no doubt about it,” said Alan Bayle, a forensic scene analyst and former Metropolitan police instructor. “There’s been no investigation; they’re planting evidence and the thing is a shambles. I’ve never seen anything like it. The Foreign Office haven’t done their job properly. It’s one big cover-up.”

Mother closes in on truth of son's killing
Times, June 26, 2005 ( PDF)

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