| Assassination of Zoran Đinđić | |
|---|---|
Position of Zoran Đinđić and the sniper at the moment of assassination |
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| Location | Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro |
| Date | March 12, 2003 12:25 p.m. (GMT+1) |
| Target | Zoran Đinđić |
| Attack type | Sniper assassination |
| Deaths | 1 killed |
| Injured | 1 wounded |
| Perpetrator(s) | Zvezdan Jovanović with 11 accomplices |
The assassination of Zoran Đinđić, the Prime Minister of Serbia, took place on Wednesday, March 12, 2003, in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro.
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The assassination of Đinđić was preceded by several unsuccessful attempts on his life. Most notable was in February 2003, in which a truck driven by Dejan Milenković (known as Bagzi, a member of the criminal Zemun Clan) tried to force the Prime Minister's car off the highway in New Belgrade. Đinđić escaped injury only due to the outstanding reaction of his driver and his security detail. Milenković was arrested, but released from custody after only a few days. The investigative court explained this decision by stating that Milenković was a salesman whose business suffered from his absence.
Đinđić had made many enemies for his reformist economic policies, clampdown on organised crime, and his pro-Western stance (chiefly relinquishing Slobodan Milošević to the ICTY). The murder was allegedly organised by Dušan Spasojević and Milorad Ulemek, also known as Legija. Ulemek is an ex-commander of the special police unit founded by Milošević's secret service during the 1990s, who ordered Zvezdan Jovanović to carry out the assassination. Legija was connected to the powerful Zemun clan of the Serbian mafia, and had been recently sentenced to 40 years in jail for other offences that included murder and attempted murder.
At 12:25 Central European Time, Đinđić was fatally wounded by gunshot while walking to the main Serbian government building to meet the Foreign Minister of Sweden, Anna Lindh, and her colleague Jan O. Karlsson. According to the official government statement, Đinđić was not conscious and did not have a pulse upon arriving at the emergency ward.[1] His bodyguard Milan Veruović was also seriously wounded in the stomach by another shot.
Đinđić's assassin, police specialist Zvezdan Jovanović (also known as Zveki), fired the bullets from the window of a building approximately 180 meters away, using a sniper version of the Heckler & Koch G3 battle rifle.[2] Jovanović was born in 1965 in Peć, Kosovo. He had been a member of the JSO, or the Red Berets, as people called them, and held the police rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Jovanović was active in the series of Yugoslav wars in the 1990s and stated he killed Đinđić because he saw him as a traitor to Serbia.
Aleksandar Simović, one of the co-conspirators, was arrested in Belgrade on November 23, 2006. Two other suspects with Zemun connections, Dušan Spasojević and Mile Luković, were killed by police during an arrest attempt on March 27, 2003.[3]
On 23 May 2007 the Belgrade Special Court for Organised Crime found Simović and eleven other men - Milorad Ulemek, Zvezdan Jovanović, Dejan Milenković, Vladimir Milisavljević Budala, Sretko Kalinić, Ninoslav Konstantinović, Milan Jurišić, Dušan Krsmanović, Željko Tojaga, Saša Pejaković and Branislav Bezarević - guilty of arranging the murder of Zoran Đinđić.