Milorad Ulemek

Milorad Ulemek ( Serbian - Cyrillic Милорад Улемек , also Milorad Luković / Милорад Луковић * 15. March 1968 in Belgrade ), called Legija ( Serbian for Legion), is a former Foreign Legionnaire and was the initiator of the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić to Sentenced to 40 years in prison .

Life

Ulemek served in the French Foreign Legion from 1985 to 1992 and completed combat missions in Chad , Rwanda , Libya and also took part in the Gulf War. In 1992 he deserted and returned to Serbia . In 1994 he married and took the family name of his first wife, Luković. He later resumed his maiden name.

At the beginning of the Yugoslav wars , he joined the Serbian Volunteer Guard ( Srpska dobrovoljačka garda ) and rose to its leader in 1995. In the Bosnian War he took part in the fighting for Bijeljina and Velika Kladuša . Luković later became head of the Unit for Special Operations ( Jedinica za specijalne operacije , JSO), an anti-terrorism special unit of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, which was called "Crvene Beretke" (Serbian for "Red Berets"). During the war in Kosovo , the unit guarded the Serbian President Slobodan Milošević .

After the murder of Zoran ThinĐić in 2003, Ulemek went into hiding. The Red Berets were dissolved and many of their members, including the shooter Zvezdan Jovanović , were arrested and tried and convicted in Belgrade in 2005 for criminal activities.

It is believed that Ulemek had the Serbian prime minister murdered in revenge because Đinđić wanted to smash the mafia structures in Serbia and dissolve Ulemek's unit. The unit was due to connections to the " Zemun - Klan ", a local Mafia , discredited organization. She attracted attention through large-scale criminal activities and numerous feuds with local competitors such as the Surčin clan of Ljubiša Buha. In these military-led private wars, many competitors and gang members were murdered and considerable property damage was caused.

On May 2, 2004 Ulemek surrendered to the Serbian authorities after a long manhunt. It became known that he had repeatedly entered his house unnoticed while it was surrounded by special police forces and guarded around the clock.

Ulemek was sentenced to a total of 55 years in prison in Belgrade in July 2005 for the establishment of a criminal organization, the attempted murder of the Foreign Minister of Serbia-Montenegro, Vuk Drašković, and the murder of the former Serbian President Ivan Stambolić . He confessed to organizing the murders on behalf of Slobodan Milošević and justified his actions with military obedience. Since the death penalty was abolished in Serbia in 2005, Ulemek received the maximum legal sentence of 40 years instead.

Ulemek operated with the support of some assistants as a writer and published two novels, "Gvozdeni rov" (Iron Trench , 2003) and "Legionar" (Legionnaire, 2005), in which he his view of the Foreign Legion , soldierly honor the and sets out recent political events. The books are in relatively high demand, with the first novel alone having sold more than 50,000 copies by the end of 2005.

On May 23, 2007 Ulemek received the maximum sentence for involvement in the murder of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. The murder of the Prime Minister was "a political crime, a crime against the state," read the verdict.

On April 18, 2012, the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik claimed to have been in contact with Ulemek and other “militant nationalists” during his trial; Breivik also referred to Ulemek as a "war hero". Ulemek and his lawyers then denied contact with Breivik.

Fonts

• Gvozdeni rov . M-Books, Beograd 2003.
• Legionary . Spina, Beograd 2005, ISBN 86-907405-0-3 .
• U tigrovom gnezdu [In the tiger's nest] . Publisher, 2018.

literature

• Marko Lopušina: Legija i zemunski klan [Legija and the Zemun clan] . 1st edition. Knjiga-Komerc, Beograd 2004, ISBN 86-7712-014-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Zeit Online: Serbia: Maximum sentences for Djindjic murderers
2. ↑ nrk.no