Police documents on suicide of ombudsman's friend

Police documents on suicide of ombudsman's friend

BELGRADE -- The Interior Ministry (MUP) has published documents from a police investigation in the 1993 death of a friend of Sasa Jankovic, who now serves ombudsman.

The man committed suicide in Jankovic's apartment. The documents the MUP published confirm Jankovic's statements made during the past several days that the pistol used in the suicide was in his legal possession.

The MUP said on its website that the documents that include firearms licenses and a contract about an exchange of pistols are published due to the great interest of the public.

They show that Jankovic on March 22, 1993, some ten days before the suicide, exchanged his pistol for another with another person, along an officially stamped court contract.

Jankovic said earlier that the pistol used in the suicide first belonged to his father, and then to him.

The MUP documents show that Jankovic was the owner of a CZ M-57, for which he had a firearms license, before he exchanged it for a CZ 99. He also had a license for the second weapon.

The law at the time stipulated that weapons cannot be exchanged or sold to a person without a license to possess or buy firearms, and therefore the court would not have been able to stamp the contract without having access to valid documents.

The investigating inspector's report said that the police interviewed Jankovic who said the pistol was bought from the Crvena Zastava factory, and that he "did not have the firearms license for it for the moment," but that the permit was issued and in the police station in the town of Loznica.

The license shows that Jankovic possesses a CZ-99 pistol, that the license is stamped by the police in...