Arrests in slaying of Serb prime minister
Acting Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic told his strife-weary nation that a successor to Djindjic would be nominated Sunday, in an attempt to maintain as much stability as possible during the uncertain period ahead.
After a day of intensive manhunts under a government-
declared state of emergency, police said 56 people had been detained on suspicion of conspiring in Wednesday's sharpshooter ambush on Djindjic, who was shot as he walked into his office building.
Two significant figures
Many of those arrested belonged to an organized crime ring, the Zemun clan, which Djindjic had planned to target in a crackdown, authorities said. But the gunmen and the gang's key leaders remained at large.
More significant was the revelation yesterday that two other men — Franko Simatovic and Jovica Stanisic — had also been detained, strengthening suggestions that Djindjic's killing was not solely linked to the mafia crackdown but also wrapped up in this country's bloody political past.
Stanisic was former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's secret-service chief, and Simatovic founded the notorious special-
operations unit known as the "Red Berets."
Some observers say Djindjic was killed partly because former members of Serbia's nationalist paramilitary groups feared that he would turn them over to the war-crimes tribunal at The Hague.
The Red Berets are believed to have committed massacres of Bosnian Muslims and ethnic Albanian Kosovars on orders from the very top as part of a state-sanctioned campaign of "ethnic cleansing." Many former Red Berets are now members of the Zemun clan, and some are rumored to be under sealed indictment by The Hague.
Covic acknowledged that the "constant pressure" on Belgrade to cooperate with the war-crimes tribunal could have been a factor in Djindjic's killing.
'A son of Serbia'
Armed guards and chilly wind did not deter hundreds of residents who came to pay respects to their fallen prime minister, a man many felt stood a chance of restoring some normality and bringing reform to their strife-torn country.
"He was trying to lead Serbs into Europe, into true democracy," Ljubica Danicic, 76, said as mourners laid flowers and lighted candles near the ambush site.
Although criticized by some as a sometimes Machiavellian politician who swayed with the wind, Djindjic was "a son of Serbia," Danicic said, "a democrat in heart and soul."
His government advocated economic and political reforms to push Serbia-Montenegro — a loose confederation of the members of the former Yugoslavia — out of the shadow of its communist and war-ravaged past.
But those reforms put him at odds with Belgrade's underworld, a collection of ruthless mobs that deal in narcotics, kidnappings and contract killings. As former paramilitary members whom Milosevic rewarded with their own turf for services rendered, many felt threatened by the intense pressure Djindjic had come under from the West to hand over war-crimes suspects.
'Legija'
Some former Red Berets — particularly the group's leader, Milorad Lukovic, better known as Legija — are rumored to be close to the top of The Hague's list of wanted fugitives.
Legija's men, who are fiercely loyal to him, were reputedly the most violent of the special-operations units whose job was to help create a "Greater Serbia."
The group was formed sometime in the early '90s, allegedly under orders from Milosevic, as a secret weapon in the Serbian cause. Put together by, paradoxically, an ethnic Croat named Franko Simatovic, the original gang was a somewhat ragtag band of former policemen and convicts who, some say, were promised a pardon if they signed up for the cause.
They were known in the beginning as "Frenki's boys" and established themselves early: In 1991, according to a published interview with an unidentified former member, the men slaughtered about 100 Muslims and Croats in the city of Mostar, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The former Red Beret described how five of his fellow fighters lined up their civilian victims along a river bank, then shot, stabbed or beat them all to death in half an hour.
At some point, Simatovic was succeeded by Lukovic, a former member of the French Legion. He was known as Legija, for "legionnaire," after the group's tradition of assigning nicknames.
"They're really death squads," said Sonja Biserko, head of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, in Belgrade.
Ties to Milosevic
Human-rights advocates draw a direct line from the Red Berets to Milosevic, who now sits in the dock at The Hague. Besides killing Bosnian Muslims, Croats and ethnic Albanian Kosovars, the group is also believed to have committed at least two political assassination attempts under Milosevic's rule. The first targeted an opposition politician named Vuk Draskovic, who survived the attempt on his life in 1999, and the second, in 2000, was aimed at a mentor-turned-critic of Milosevic, former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic.
Stambolic disappeared while out on his morning jog and has never been found.
In the tortuous world of Balkan politics, however, the Red Berets were partially responsible for Milosevic's downfall.
When protesters thronged the presidential palace in the fall of 2000, the vaunted paramilitary group sat on the sidelines. They had been persuaded not to intervene by a member of Milosevic's political opposition, who later boasted publicly about having cut a deal with the gang.
That man was Djindjic.
After Milosevic's ouster, Djindjic publicly declared that he wouldn't send anyone to The Hague solely because the person had been in charge of units that committed atrocities.
His recent moves to comply with The Hague's demands therefore stirred alarm among those who had thought him an ally.