Ljubomir Magaš

Magaš mother with a photo of her son

Ljubomir Magaš (born May 27, 1948 in Belgrade ; † November 10, 1986 in Frankfurt am Main ), known as Ljuba Zemunac (Ljuba from Zemun ) or in boxing circles as Lupo , was a Yugoslav amateur boxer ( CSC Frankfurt ) as well as a pimp and gang leader in Frankfurt am Main, called the "Godfather of Frankfurt and Offenbach ".

Life

Ljubomir Magaš grew up as the son of Šime Magaš, a Croat from the Dalmatian hinterland of Zadar , and the Serb Rosa Ćurčić in the Belgrade suburb of Zemun. The father left the family when Magaš was six years old.

At the end of the 1960s Magaš went to Milan and from there to Vienna and was known to the police for burglary, jewelery and bank robbery, coercion, pimping and extortion. Then Magaš went to Frankfurt am Main, was registered as a member of the Greater Serbian Chetnik organization "Ravna Gora" and thus received political asylum.

From the Café Journal in Offenbach, Magaš planned the activities of his organization and extorted protection money from Yugoslav businesses, especially innkeepers in the greater Frankfurt area. In addition, he operated usury of credit and organized burglary.

The Magaš clan used its contacts to Yugoslav criminals across Europe and socialist Yugoslavia as a retreat. The core of the clan consisted of a good dozen heavy boys, at peak times around 250 criminals are said to have been under Magaš's command.

Both the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution investigated the Magaš clan.

Opponents of the Yugoslav regime were also terrorized by the Magaš clan. B. Exiled Croats. The Federal Criminal Police Office suspected that the Yugoslav secret service SDB had repeatedly released people of the Magaš clan from prison, provided them with false passports and had murder orders carried out on exiles. A witness stated Magaš as the murderer of the Croatian exile Nikola Miličević (1937–1980) and Magaš was also associated with the murder of the dissident Stjepan Đureković (1926–1983).

On November 10, 1986 Magaš took part in a trial for extortion, assault and coercion against him, before the regional court in Frankfurt am Main . On leaving the court, he was shot in front of the court entrance in Heiligkreuzgasse by rival mafioso Goran Vuković (1948-1994). According to Vuković, Magaš shot him in front of his apartment in Frankfurt's Westend in October 1984, which Vuković only survived through an emergency operation. Vuković was sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter .

swell

• Ivan Čolović: The Death of Ljuba Zemunac or: The Protector's Paradox . In: Klaus Roth. (Ed.): Southeast European popular literature in the 19th and 20th centuries . Münchner Vereinigung für Volkskunde, Munich 1993, ISBN 978-3-926844-13-2 , p. 239-253 .
• Dušan Popović, Nebojša Pavlović: Ljuba Zemunac: maneken smrti . Litera, Belgrade 1989.
• “I did it out of fear” . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28/1987 , July 6, 1987 ( spiegel.de [PDF]).
• Fillet and sauce . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40/1985 , September 30, 1985 ( spiegel.de [PDF]).