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Djindjic Trial ‘Failed to Identify Political Background’

24 05 2007  While late premier’s allies praise the guilty verdicts, many regret that the trial never explained who ordered the killing.

By Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade

The Special Court for Organized Crime on Wednesday handed a group of 12 men, including former commanders of an elite Serbian secret service unit and members of an organized crime gang, a total of 378 years in prison for the murder of the former prime minister, Zoran Djindjic.

Although the trial ended in convictions of the people directly involved in the 2003 assassination, which has slowed down Serbia’s reform and delayed its Euro-Atlantic integration, the real instigators and political motives for the crime remain hidden, politicians, observers and analysts say.

Milorad Ulemek, known as Legija, a former commander of the Special Operations Unit, JSO, received a maximum 40-year sentence for plotting to kill Djindjic on March 12, 2003, as the prime minister was entering government buildings in downtown Belgrade. Ulemek’s deputy, former colonel Zvezdan Jovanovic, also known as Zmija (The Snake), was sentenced also to 40 years in jail.

Djindjic’s death was preceded by a botched assassination attempt when the same group tried to fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the prime minister’s motorcade on the main road leading to Belgrade airport. It followed a mutiny by the JSO whose troops blocked the key highway, demanding an end to extraditions of war-crimes suspects to the UN war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Ulemek, a former member of the French Foreign Legion who fought in 1992-95 in Bosnia and in the 1998-99 war in Kosovo, commanded the JSO, or Red Berets. The UN war crimes tribunal holds the unit responsible for several atrocities and crimes against humanity committed during the wars of the 1990s.

To defuse tensions, Djindjic’s coalition government made several concession to the unit and also allowed the Red Berets to take part in the running of the Department for State Security or RDB, a body that gained notoriety during the 13-year rule of former president Slobodan Milosevic.

After Djindjic’s death, the JSO was disbanded and the RDB underwent a series of reforms. The new agency, the Security and Information Agency or BIA, has remained under control of Vojislav Kostunica’s conservative government and his trusted ally, Rade Bulatovic.

Although he welcomed the verdict as “a great contribution to the reform of our judiciary system”, Serbian President Boris Tadic, who succeeded Djindjic as head of the Democratic Party, also urged “further substantial reforms of police, army and security services” to prevent anything similar in the future.

After the sentencing, Kostunica, Tadic’s coalition partner, said Djindjic’s murder had “represented a very heavy blow to Serbia”, adding that “justice has been done, and the verdict implies that the state and the hand of justice will reach all those who have committed a crime”.

The remaining ten members of the accused, former JSO men, ex-policemen and members of the so-called Zemun gang, an organised crime clan named after a Belgrade neighbourhood, received sentences of between 30 and 35 years for their roles in plotting or executing Djindjic’s murder.

During the investigation, Jovanovic admitted he was the shooter who killed Djindjic and seriously injured his bodyguard, Milan Veruovic.

Sentencing the accused, Nata Mesarevic, the presiding judge, said that “Ulemek organised the killing while Jovanovic was only a shooter”.

In closing statements made earlier this month, both Ulemek and Jovanovic had denied responsibility for the murder. Jovanovic also rejected the confession he had made in the pre-trial investigation arguing it was given under torture and duress.

Although he welcomed the sentences, Zoran Zivkovic, Serbia’s former prime minister, and Djindjic’s closest friend, complained of shortcomings. He said the indictment failed to “dealing with the political background”.

“It was focused only on findings related to the technical part of the killing, the direct organizers and the man who pulled the trigger,” Zivkovic told Balkan Insight.

Zivkovic added that “revelations about the political background to the murder will only come when the defendants examine their appeal options and face four decades in jail”. He added: “Maybe then they will talk in exchange for some leniency from the state.”

Ulemek is already serving a 40-year sentence for the 2000 abduction and killing of Ivan Stambolic, former president of Serbia, killed on orders from then president Milosevic. He is also a top suspect in the 1999 assassination attempt of Vuk Draskovic, then a leading opposition figure.

Biljana Kovacevic Vuco, of the of the Belgrade-based Committee of Lawyers for Human Rights, told Balkan Insight the outcome fo the trial was not a surprise. “Such sentences were expected. All the evidence presented by the prosecution was flawless,” she said.

But she added that the trial “had failed to highlight the political climate that preceded the killing and the possible political instigators of the murder”.

Zivkovic said that the “political climate created by not only Djindjic’s political opponents, but by Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia throughout the media, contributed to a notion in the minds of the criminals that their clans and ties with the JSO allowed them to do whatever they wanted.”

He continued: “They clearly came to a conclusion they can even kill the premier.” Earlier, the trial was marred by the resignations of prosecutors, deputy prosecutors and Marko Kljajevic, the presiding judge. On several occasions Ulemek’s backers appeared in court sporting T-shirts with the design of a howling wolf, the JSO trademark.

Milos Vasic, of the Belgrade-based Vreme weekly and the author of the book on Djindjic’s death, said it was “now up to the Democratic Party to pursue the political background of the killing”.

He added: “The Democrats now control the Justice Ministry, so they will have the prosecutors and ample space for action.”

Vasic referred to the recent coalition agreement between the country’s centrist parties under which Tadic’s Democrats will have the right to occupy the justice portfolio.

Under Serbian law, both the defendants and prosecution will have the right to file an appeal before the Supreme Court to question the legality the proceedings.

Aleksandar Vasovic is BIRN Serbia editor. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.