Zoran Djindjic

Shot on 12 March 2003 on the steps of the Serbian government building in Belgrade by a sniper of the Zemun clan; the democratic prime minister was killed pursuing war criminals and organized crime.

Overview

Djindjic, the philosopher and opposition leader who organized the Bulldozer Revolution and delivered Milosevic to The Hague in 2001, had set a deadline to arrest the mafia-linked secret police unit veterans and the remaining war crimes fugitives. A sniper of the Zemun gang, tied to the Red Berets special unit, shot him from a window across the government courtyard; he died in hospital within the hour. Over ten thousand police swept the country in Operation Sabre; some four thousand were arrested and the clan leadership convicted with the triggermen, among them the former special operations commander Milorad Ulemek. The murder demonstrated the fusion of crime, secret services, and politics that the post-Milosevic state had inherited, and became the founding martyr myth of Serbia pro-European politics.