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Comment: Djindjic Trial Never Really Explained The Motives

30 04 2007  

The three-year trial of the conspirators accused of assassinating Serbia’s former prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, on March 12, 2003, is almost over.

The evidence that was presented looked solid, the court was as independent as could have been expected and the verdict is predictable.

However, the court had failed to identify all the political forces and the climate that led to Djindjic’s death.

Milorad Lukovic, alias Legija, former commander of the Serbian secret Service’s Special Operations Unit, his deputy, Police Colonel Zvezdan Jovanovic, alias Zveki or Zmija (the Snake) and a number of their accomplices from the so-called Zemun crime gang face up to 40 years each in jail, if found guilty.

The verdict and sentencing are expected in May and will be subject to appeal to the Supreme Court, a lengthy process that can take months.

In the closing arguments, all kinds of conspiracy theories were invoked. Most were directed towards the alleged plots of foreign powers to assassinate Djindjic because he had been “disobedient” or was “burnt out” as a Western “asset”. There was, in other words, plenty of geopolitics, including the airing of some fairly insane arguments, which is normal in Serbia.

What was missing was a deeper investigation into the political motives of the perpetrators. Perhaps that segment was beyond the court’s reasonable reach.

Zoran Zivkovic, Djindjic’s successor as prime minister and a close ally, said this did not surprise him.

Zivkovic said he had “never expected the identification of political instigators during the trial as its goal was to resolve the part of the story related to the crime and its actual perpetrators.”

“We will get closer to the instigators once the perpetrators have been convicted,” Zivkovic added, “and once they realize they will have to sit in jail for decades and should talk in exchange for some leniency”.

The trial has exposed the deep splits in Serbia, which remains politically divided into two bitterly divided camps.

One camp, comprising Djindjic’s Democratic Party, now led by the Serbian President, Boris Tadic, the reformist G17 Plus, led by the former finance minister, Mladjan Dinkic, and several other smaller parties, favours faster economic reform and close ties with the European Union and NATO. They also want to see a more pragmatic approach taken towards Kosovo.

The other camp, which is now in power and led by the Democratic Party of Serbia under the caretaker premier Vojislav Kostunica, is more conservative.

Prone to isolationism, it frequently flirts with hard-line nationalists and with the forces that ruled the country under Slobodan Milosevic.

These divisions have had their impact on the trial. Political pressure on the court was often strong, as spin doctors from both sides tired to draw the media into their various confusing and sensationalist messages and conspiracy theories.

“Political pressure was obvious particularly when the Minister of Interior, Dragan Jocic, stated that the indictment was flimsy and when the Minister of Justice, Zoran Stojkovic, threatened to dissolve the Special Court,” Zivkovic noted.

The polarised political climate in Serbia had its impact on the trial’s closing arguments, too. Srdja Popovic, the legendary Serbian criminal lawyer, threw a pebble into the still waters in his own closing argument.

He outlined his future appeal motion, arguing against the court ruling that denied his demand to be allowed to submit new evidence.

Popovic had wanted to bring Kostunica, a couple of his ministers, director of the Security and Intelligence Agency, BIA, Rade Bulatovic, the chief of the military security service, General Aco Tomic, the head of the state television, Aleksandar Tijanic, and some minor players, to the witness stand.

Popovic said these witnesses needed to explain their actions and words connected with the conspiracy since 2001 in order to shed light on the political motives of the perpetrators.


He left open the possibility that some or all of them had either encouraged or even blatantly supported the conspiracy.


The motion met a deafening silence, which was followed by a flat refusal. Clearly, no one wanted to touch that particular hot potato, even if Serbia’s Supreme Court will one day have to.

Popovic also raised the issue of the “missing” telephone transcripts of conversations held between the protected witness Dejan Milenkovic, alias Bugsy, and his lawyer, Biljana Kajganic. Milenkovic testified not only about the circumstances of Djindjic’s actual death but about the entire plot and an earlier failed assassination attempt on the ex-prime minister.

Popovic claimed it had been filed with the Special Court’s registrar and that the presiding judge, Nata Mesarevic, had refused to disclose it to him, even though as a lawyer for the prosecuted he has a legal right to see it.

On April 27, the first defendant, Legija, the former commander of the Special Operations Unit and the man indicted as the leading character in the plot, gave his closing argument.

It was an unbearably boring and confused tale of fantastic conspiracy theories, mixed with cheap political marketing, empty threats and even emptier boasts. The overall impression he left was of a small time mobster, using his last chance to say something in public before starting his 40-year jail term.

In a show of defiance, Legija appeared in court wearing a T-shirt featuring the head of a howling wolf in a red beret, the badge of the Special Operations Unit he had once commanded.

He has already been sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in conspiracies to murder Serbia’s former president, Ivan Stambolic, and the opposition leader Vuk Draskovic.

He faces yet another sentence related to another case on trial involving the Zemun crime gang.

The shooter himself, Jovanovic, alias Zveki, Legija’s deputy in the Special Operations Unit, is expected to present his closing argument on May 4.

Jovanovic confessed to the crime in April 2003 during a by-the-book interrogation made in the presence of his lawyer, a judge and an assistant public prosecutor, the confession thus becoming court-admissible evidence.

His lawyer has repeatedly tried to retract the validity of the confession, arguing that it was made under duress but the Supreme Court has rejected this.

Whatever Zveki says on May 4, it will hardly come as a surprise, after his detailed first confession, which was later supported by material evidence and other witnesses’ and experts’ statements.

Some observers of the case have tried to draw analogies between Djindjic case and John F Kennedy and the former Swedish leader, Olof Palme, who was assassinated in 1986.

The analogies are out of place. In this case, we have the shooter and the conspirators, too, most of whom are alive and well.

The question of who instigated them is all that remains missing. And it will probably remain so until the day a court decides to delve deeper into the issue, subject, of course, to Serbia’s volatile political climate.


Milos Vasic, editor of Vreme magazine, is a prominent Belgrade-based columnist. He covered the Djindjic trial first hand and is the author of the book “The Assassination of Zoran Djindjic”, published in 2005.