Thirteen charged with assassination in trial of century

THE trial of 13 suspects charged with the assassination of reformist Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic opened with the suspected mastermind still at large and conspiracy theories rife.

The suspects, including alleged assassin Zvezdan Jovanovic, a former special police unit officer with links to organised crime, arrived at the Belgrade Special Court amid tight security and sat behind a bullet-proof glass screen.

Jovanovic has been charged with having shot Djindjic on March 12 outside the Serbian government building in a murder that shocked the former Yugoslav republic and dealt a fatal blow to the reformist government.

“As the defendant, I ask whether this murder was politically motivated or whether it was a settling of accounts between groups of people,” Jovanovic told the court yesterday in an initial statement read by his lawyer, Nenad Vukasovic.

Jovanovic is widely seen as only the trigger-man in a wider plot by gangsters and nationalists to bring down Djindjic’s government.

Djindjic had stirred up a dangerous mix of powerful enemies after he extradited former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague in 2001 and launched a crackdown on organised crime.

Fifteen people were originally charged in connection with his murder, including two organised crime bosses and former police with links to politicians.

However, it was revealed as the trial began yesterday, that the charges against two of the suspects had been dropped in exchange for their co-operation as witnesses, lawyers said.

The 15 were among more than 30 people who were charged earlier this year with crimes including a string of high-profile murders, terrorism and the formation of a “criminal enterprise” aimed at bringing down the government.

Police arrested hundreds of people in a massive operation against organised crime after the assassination. The alleged mastermind, former police special unit commander Milorad Lukovic, better known as Legija, is still at large and is one of several suspects who will be tried in absentia.

Another gang leader and suspected organiser, Dusan Spasojevic, was killed in a confrontation with police in Belgrade on March 27.

Djindjic was a young, motivated leader who had been a central part of the anti-Milosevic movement throughout the war-torn 1990s.

His popularity was waning at the time of his death but there was a massive outpouring of popular grief at his funeral, and hundreds of thousands of people marched behind his cortege through the streets of Belgrade.

Branded “the trial of the century” for Serbia, there are already strong doubts that the court will be able to uncover the full truth behind the assassination.

“Experts unanimously agree that this will be the biggest and most spectacular trial in Serbia’s recent history,” the Politika daily wrote yesterday. Despite the police conclusion that Jovanovic was a lone sniper, several media reports and Djindjic’s former bodyguard, Milan Veruovic, have disputed the official findings.

Veruovic, who was seriously wounded in the shooting, has said two snipers opened fire from opposite positions on streets parallel to the government headquarters. He was in the public gallery yesterday and may be called as a witness.

The weekly, Nin, reported that forensic evidence from a “magic bullet” gathered at the scene of the murder also suggested there had been “at least another gunman“.