SERBIA: PM’s Assassins Get 40 Years in Prison

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, May 23 2007 (IPS) - The most-watched criminal trial in modern Serbian history ended Wednesday, as the mastermind behind the assassination of reform-oriented Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and the shooter himself both received 40-year prison terms.

Milorad Ulemek, a former commander of the notorious Special Police Unit (JSO) under then president Slobodan Milosevic, was pronounced guilty by a Special Court for Organised Crime in Belgrade for plotting and carrying out the assassination of Djindjic on Mar. 12, 2003.

Ulemek’s deputy, Zvezdan Jovanovic, who killed the prime minister with a single sniper shot, was also found guilty. Both were given 40-year sentences – the maximum permitted since the Serbian justice system revoked capital punishment.

“This was not a simple killing but a political killing, with the aim of destabilising the country,” presiding judge Nata Mesarovic told the court as she read the verdict. “It’s a very difficult thing to know that we live in a country whose prime minister can be killed by organised crime,” she added.

Djindjic fell victim to a syndicate dubbed the “Zemun Clan” after a neighbourhood in the capital of Belgrade. The gang comprised powerful local criminals, closely associated with elements of the police and the JSO, who had operated unimpeded since the 1990s and the Milosevic era.

The prime minister was killed only days before a police operation aimed at arresting the leaders of the Zemun Clan.

Another nine members of the group charged with involvement in the killing were sentenced to 30 to 35 years in prison. One received eight years, as the court said he was only a messenger within the group. Some of those convicted were former members of the JSO.

The JSO was a clandestine unit, created by the Milosevic regime, which operated during the wars in neighbouring Bosnia and Croatia. It became notorious for atrocities against non-Serbs, but official propaganda in Serbia described it as a mysterious group of “brave” and “daring” operatives who acted in the interests of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs.

Its commander, Milorad Ulemek, went under the nom de guerre “Legija” (Legion) after serving in the French Foreign Legion prior to the wars of the 1990s. He was frequently praised by the Serbian media as a hero.

However, as Judge Mesarovic said in her three-hour-long discourse at the sentencing, the Zemun Clan was not aiming at heroism, but at turning the country back to its shadowy past by “undermining the reforms proposed by Djindjic, bringing Milosevic loyalists to power and halting extraditions of war crimes suspects to the international war crimes court in The Hague.” Djindjic was the first non-communist prime minister of Serbia since World War Two, and led the popular uprising that toppled Milosevic in 2000.

He allowed the extradition of Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2001, a move sharply criticised by Serb nationalists. Milosevic died in the ICTY detention unit in March 2006.

War crimes committed against non-Serbs remain a major stumbling block to reconciliation in Serbia, where part of the public believes they are an invention of “enemies of the nation”, while another segment stands for investigating and punishing the perpetrators.

In the case of Djindjic’s assassination, however, most people wanted to see justice to be served, and appeared relieved that the judiciary did not bow to the extreme pressures from the “patriotic” media and nationalist elements.

“This was an expected, normal and logical sentence,” human rights activist Biljana Kovacevic Vuco told IPS. “All the evidence at the court’s disposal was confirmed, despite many obstacles over the years.”

The trial began in December 2003 and saw many twists and turns.

The original presiding judge resigned last September due to “pressures”, and the current judge, Nata Mesarovic, received threatening messages from unidentified “patriots” warning her not to hand down heavy sentences to Ulemek and Jovanovic, while Djindjic’s sister was allegedly harassed by loyalists of Ulemek. Two witnesses were killed under murky circumstances.

In 2005, a member of the Zemun Clan who had been arrested in Greece was extradited to Serbia, agreed to testify and revealed many secrets about the functioning of the group.

“It was an organised group of people, with strictly divided tasks, a hierarchy, etc., that was involved in major criminal activities that undermined the security in our country,” Judge Mesarovic said. “The crucial act was the assassination of the prime minister.”

Some members of the clan are undergoing a separate trial for more than 30 murders and a smuggling operation that involved hundreds of kilos of drugs.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, who took over the Democratic Party after Djindjic’s assassination, told the local media that the verdicts represent a “turning point for the Serbian judiciary”, which should insist on “building a solid legal order as a precondition for the European future of Serbia”.

Serbia hopes to join European Union, but has stalled on carrying out the requisite reforms.

Dragoljub Micunovic, one of the founders of multiparty democracy in Serbia in the early 1990s, told B92 Radio that “the sentencing brings an end to a tragic event.”

“Our society was waiting for a long while to see the final showdown with organised crime, and I see the satisfaction society obtained in that direction,” he added.