Djindjic assassination trial verdicts to be announced

Verdicts and sentences in the landmark trial of 12 people charged with the assassination of Serbia’s first pro-democratic prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, are to be announced today.

The Serbian paramilitaries and gang figures – war veterans from former President Slobodan Milosevic’s era – have been charged with organising and carrying out the March 2003 sniper attack in front of the Belgrade government headquarters.

The indictment said they assassinated Djindjic to halt pro-Western reforms, bring nationalists back to power and stop further extradition of war crimes suspects to the UN war crimes tribunal.

Djindjic spearheaded Milosevic’s removal from power in 2000. He later handed Milosevic over to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, to answer for his role in the 1990s wars during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Milosevic died of a heart attack in his prison cell last year.

The landmark trial of the 12, Serbia’s first for organised crime, started in December 2003.

It has been delayed by bureaucratic and legal wrangling, the murder of two prosecution witnesses, resignation of a chief judge only months before it concluded, and apparent attempts by Djindjic’s political successors to influence the trial proceedings.

The prosecution and lawyers representing Djindjic’s family have demanded maximum 40-year prison sentences for his suspected killers. The defence said they should be released.

All but one of the suspects have denied they organised and carried out the assassination.

Five of the 12 suspects were being tried in absentia because they went into hiding after the killing.