Serbian State Security Officers’ Armed Uprising Acquittal Upheld

In a final ruling that was made public on Monday, Belgrade Appeals Court cleared Milorad 'Legija' Ulemek and six other former members of the Special Operations Unit, JSO of involvement in a rebellion in November 2001 against the Serbian government led by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

The other men who were cleared were Zvezdan Jovanovic, Veselin Lecic, Mico Petrakovic, Dragoslav Krsmanovic, Dragisa Radic and Vladimir Protic.

The ruling, which was handed down on June 14, upheld Belgrade Higher Court's verdict from July 2018, which established that there was no evidence to support the allegation that the members of the operational unit of the JSO were prepared to use firearms in achieving the objectives of their rebellion.

The appeals ruling also endorsed Belgrade Higher Court's view that it was crucial that the Serbian government did not declare a state of emergency, which it would have done if there genuinely had been an armed uprising, and that the security services were not put on combat alert and had no information that the constitutional order and the security of the state and its citizens were in jeopardy, or that there would be a violent takeover of power.

The JSO members were accused of blocking a main street in the Serbian capital and the road to the town of Vrbas in November 2001, allegedly because the newly-installed democratic government had sent two of its members, brothers Nenad and Predrag Banovic, to stand trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Two years later, in 2003, Djindjic was shot dead in front of the government building in Belgrade in an operation organised by the JSO and the 'Zemun Clan' organised crime gang.

Ulemek was sentenced in 2009 to 40 years in...