Goran Radosavljević

Goran Radosavljević "Guri"
Born 1957
Aranđelovac, SFR Yugoslavia
Allegiance Serbia
Years of service 1985-2005
Rank Lieutenant General
Commands held Operational Group (1997–1999)
Žandarmerija (2001-2005)
Battles/wars Kosovo War (1998–1999)

Goran Radosavljević (nom de guerre: Guri, meaning "rock" in Albanian) was a Serbian police General and the first commander of the Serbian special police unit the Žandarmerija.[1]

Early life

He was born in 1957 in Aranđelovac, SR Serbia, SFR Yugoslavia. Radosavljević graduated from the faculty for physical culture.[2] He worked in the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs since 1985. He initially taught in special combat, and then became head of the relevant department.

Yugoslav Wars

Brig. Gen. Kenneth Quinlan (foreground, right), the Commanding General of Task Force Falcon meets the Guri at the administrative boundary between Kosovo and Serbia during a meeting to discuss the success of the Ground Safety Zone reduction on May 30, 2001.

When the Yugoslav Wars broke out, he joined the special police units which were subsequently turned into the gendarmerie. During the Kosovo War (1998–1999), he led a cluster of counter-terrorism teams that were known as the Operational Group (OPG). They were established to counter the terrorism-linked, Albanian militant organization the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK) which sought to separate Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The OPG were later suspected of killing 41 ethnic-Albanian civilians in the Ćuška massacre in western Kosovo in May 1999.[3]

The General led the OPG in its fight against the KLA for the whole Kosovo War. A number of human rights groups have claimed that the OPG committed war crimes against civilians. Radosavljević was the person in charge of the military operation in Račak on 15 January 1999, which would become known as the Račak massacre.[4][5] The Serbian War Crime's prosecutor also brought him in connection with the killing of the Bytyqi brothers, three Albanian American brothers who came to Kosovo to fight on the side of the KLA.[6] Radosavljević was in charge of a police training facility where the Bytyqi brothers were detained, executed, and buried in a grave without any legal authorization.[7]

After the Kosovo War

He became the first commander of the re-established Gendarmerie of Serbia on 28 June 2001.

In 2003, the United States agreed to the deployment of 1,000 Serbian troops to Afghanistan, commanded by General Goran Radosavljević.[8][9]

In 2005, he left the Serbian police.[10]

On 17 December 2006, the Serbian police announced that they were searching for Goran Radosavljević.[11] No indictment had been issued against him, however.

In 2007, he went public and denounced the rumors that he had been hiding. By 2010, he had decided to join the Serbian Progressive Party and enrolled in politics.

As of May 2014, Radosavljević serves on the Executive Committee of the Serbian Progressive Party, the party of both President Tomislav Nikolić and Prime Minister Aleksander Vucić.[12]

References