Year of Living Dangerously

IN THE LINE OF FIRE

AIM PODGORICA, February 1, 2000

(from AIM correspondent from Belgrade)

According to papers, Petar Panic, aka Pana (aged 33) was brought to the

Belgrade Emergency Centre on January 28, with eight bullet wounds; police is still searching for Ljubomir Jovanovic (aged 30), aka Stakleni (Glass

Man) who is suspected of having shot Panic. The wounded Panic was brought to hospital after 1:00 p.m. Already at 4:15 p.m. the entire leadership of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS)gathered in the Belgrade Emergency Centre, led by Vojislav Seselj (Vice Prime Minister of the Republican Government), Tomislav Nikolic (Vice Prime Minister of the Federal Government) and Aleksandar Vucic (Republican Minister of Information). In the Emergency Centre the SRS's coalition partners were represented by Milovan Bojic, Vice Prime Minister of the Serbian Government and a high official of the Yugoslav Left (JUL).

Namely, Panic was not just anybody. He was Seselj's bodyguard and chief of his security for many years. However, it is impossible to understand his

personality and behaviour without throwing at least a cursory glance at newspaper crime reports: in September 1995 he was accused of killing Darko Djikanovic (aged 39), one of the owners of the "Arhaik" disco club: in October that same year he was suspected of participating in planting four explosive devices in Belgrade; according to the testimony of Nikola Barovic, in June 1997, following Seselj's orders, Panic inflicted serious injuries to Barovic after the TV show "Tete-a-Tete" (Face to Face) on BK

Television in which this well-known attorney poured water over the head of the Radical leader; he was brought in for interrogation in December 1997

because he beat up Branko Munjiz with a gun handle in Zemun, etc.

Epilogue: the court took into account Panic's claim that it was a case of lawful self-defence, in other words that after Djikanovic had attacked him he slapped him and that Djikanovic died after he fell and hit the back of his head against the curb stone; after Goran Batule (who was being investigated for other crimes) accused him of planting the explosive, Panic was kept in detention for four days after which he was released; after Barovic sued Panic, Seselj at his trial claimed that he was the one who had hit the attorney. Also the police took into consideration his claim that

his bodyguard was out of Belgrade at that time. Finally, an infraction proceedings were instituted against him for beating up Munjiz.

All in all, this man has based his career on his muscles and fists. The

last but not the least of Panic's achievements is the printing of his own pornographic amateur paper back in 1989, at the height of a sharp debate

between Seselj and Slavko Curuvija, late editor and founder of the "Daily Telegraph", who was murdered by unknown assassins during NATO bombing and after the "Politika Ekspres" accused him of high treason. The "protagonists" were Panic himself and one girl for which he claimed was involved with Curuvija which was, according to him, the reason why Curuvija had "picked on SRS".

In his own words, Panic worked for Seselj out of conviction and because of his business aspirations and undertakings did not see himself as a classical bodyguard. Does this have anything to do with the place where he was shot and the man suspected of pulling the trigger? Namely, the shooting took place in a house in the Belgrade suburb settlement of Surcin and Jovanovic, aka Stakleni had been arrested before as a member of the "Surcin clan" which mostly deals in stolen cars and whose boss Zoran Sijan had been killed late last November in the centre of Belgrade.

This one, as well as a dozen other unsolved murders committed in the last ten years in Belgrade, are the basic reason why bodyguards are in great demand in Serbia. Business people, crime bosses, regime and opposition leaders have them. We do not know in what situations bodyguards have succeeded to protect their clients, but what we do know is that as many as six security agents employed by various politicians lost their lives in the last four months. In the attempt made on the life of Vuk Draskovic, President of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) or in a very suspicious traffic accident, which happened near Lazarevac on October 3, 1999 Zvonko Osmajnlic, Vucko Rakocevic and Dragan Vusurovic were killed. Last December, Branko Vasiljevic, former security chief of the President of the Democratic Party (DS) Zoran Djindjic, lost his life under highly mysterious circumstances: according to the police it was a suicide, while the family, DS and SPO (the deceased was a SPO member) say that it was a murder. A month ago, Bojan Bogat, bodyguard of Vladan Batic, leader of the Christian Democratic Party of Serbia (DHSS) and Coordinator of the Alliance for Change (SZP), was wounded.

Security chiefs of important political leaders are usually people of enormous trust and, in addition to their basic job, usually hold political positions or have private business in towns in which their parties are in power. For example, Osmajnlic was Director of the Sports Centre "Tasmajdan", Rakocevic Director of the "Pinki" Sports Centre, Vasiljevic Secretary of the City Assembly at the time Djindjic was the Lord Mayor, according to some sources Panic was once co-owner of the mentioned disco-club "Arhaik", etc. In any case, wasn't Senta Milenkovic, bodyguard of the President of FR Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, promoted to General of the Ministry of the Interior. Apart from being good in various martial arts, quite a number of security agents have underground connections with the "Surcin", "Vozdovac" or some other clan. And vice versa, according to Milenko Ercic, a MUP colonel, Dejan Pitulic (aged 33), a suspect in the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic, aka Arkan, was expelled from the police because he worked as bodyguard for some infamous criminals. These are the times in which violent and tough boys, who stand on their guard and know

how to protect themselves, are appreciated.

The local regime is based on an entangled web of various interests - political, business and, as police officials like to call them lately, "criminogenic" interests. The Serbian Radical Party and its leader were never famous for their subtlety, political fairness and non-violence. At

the beginning of his political career, using a baseball bat Seselj beat up two of his party opponents, slapped in the face professors in front of the Yugoslav Assembly building, drew a gun at students, etc. One shouldn't waste one's breath on his statements. Consequently, there is no reason to believe that he was bothered by the mention of Panic's name in crime chronicles as long as things were running smoothly in the party; it a way, that contributed to its radical image. Perhaps the mentioned pornographic paper, which was distributed free of charge, best speaks of the bodyguard's loyalty to Seselj: in an intimate act the man showed his most intimate parts publicly, just to humiliate a courageous and skilful editor and publisher before the public, as authors of this "picture book" thought.

Although there were rumours that there was an attempt on Seselj's life after his party's Congress, the Radicals did not react. In all likelihood, they will not investigate the background of Panic's case unlike other opposition leaders whose bodyguards were killed. The reason for that is simple: SRS behaves as a ruling party and one of the pillars of law and order, accusing of treason from within the regime structures, without any measure or limit, all its opponents.

The fact that the authorities are busily unmasking terrorist organisations like "Spider" and OSA, which are out to get Milosevic, actually speaks that a kind of limited civil war has already been started. In such an atmosphere of general insecurity and violence it is probably all the same whether the trigger is pulled for political or criminal reasons. In these parts, for a long time now you cannot have one without the other.

Filip Svarm (AIM)