The Higher Court in Belgrade on Friday acquitted seven former members of the Serbian State Security Service’s Special Operations Unit, JSO of staging an armed mutiny in November 2001.
The verdict all but puts an end to the already slim chances that the political backers of the mutiny – which was a prelude to the murder of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic two years later by the very same men who led the JSO’s uprising – will ever be investigated for their role in both crimes.
Among the men acquitted were Milorad Ulemek, alias Legija, and Zvezdan Jovanovic, both former leaders of the JSO, who have already been sentenced to 40 years in prison for assassinating Djindjic.
Mutiny and capitulation
The JSO was officially established in 1996, but many of its members had been active since 1991, waging war in Bosnia and Croatia as part of groups that went by many different names, as well as serving in paramilitary units and becoming known for their sadistic acts of cruelty.
JSO members were distinguishable from fighters from other Serb units by their characteristic headgear – a red beret – giving them the unofficial name under which they’re best known among the wider public, the Red Berets.
The majority of these men were never tried for the crimes they allegedly committed in Bosnia, Croatia or Kosovo, where for the first time they fought as the JSO.
In June 2001, Djindjic’s government extradited former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, and then in November introduced a criminal procedure code which allowed the extradition of Yugoslav citizens to the tribunal.
Djindjic’s political opponents, most notably Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and his Democratic Party of Serbia, Vojislav Seselj and Aleksandar Vucic of the Serbian Radical Party, along with many others, opposed the legislation and led a toxic media campaign against Djindjic and cooperation with the ICTY, dubbing it, as Milosevic himself called it, an ‘anti-Serb court’.
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