High Profile Defendants Charged Over Gangland-Style Murders in Greece
Source: Balkan Insight
Archive photo, Darko Saric (right) waits for the beginning of his trial in the courtroom in Belgrade. Photo: EPA/ANDREJ CUKIC.
Serbian prosecutors have charged 19 people including two high profile defendants in relation to two execution-style gun attacks carried out in Greece in 2020.
Those indicted for the shootings, which left four dead, include Darko Saric, a Serbian citizen born in Montenegro previously convicted of drug trafficking, and Veljko Belivuk, leader of the Janjicari, [Janissaries] a notorious so-called football fan group with links to state officials and the security guard industry. Both are currently on trial for multiple criminal acts.
“The defendants Veljko Belivuk and Darko Saric, as well as Radoje Zvicer, a citizen of the Republic of Montenegro against whom proceedings are being conducted in Greece for these criminal acts, have been identified as organisers”, Serbia’s Prosecutor Office for Organised Crime said in press release on Thursday. Seven people will be charged in absentia as part of the indictment, a joint investigation carried out by judicial authorities in Serbia and Greece.
In July 2020, according to Greek police, two Montenegrins were killed in a villa in Halikouna Beach on the island of Corfu. The victims, Alan Kozar and Damir Hadzic, had multiple gunshot wounds. During the autopsy, 32 shell casings, seven fireballs and two metal fragments were collected. Greek police told BIRN in March they arrested one Albanian citizen over alleged involvement in the crime.
In January 2020 another two Montenegrin citizens, Stevan Stamatovic and Igor Dedovic, both 43, were shot dead with more than 20 bullets in front of children while dining at a well-known Greek tavern in Athens.
Both murders are suspected to be part of a bloody war between two notorious Montenegrin gangs, the Kavac and Skaljari, which has left around 100 people dead across Europe in the past decade. Saric, Belivuk and Zvicer are suspected to be part of the Kavac clan.
Saric is currently on trial in Serbia together with 14 others accused of overseeing a group that plotted to kill a witness involved in a case against the convicted drug trafficker and pressured police officers for confidential information.
In 2022, Saric was sentenced to 14 years on an earlier charge of smuggling 5.7 tons of cocaine from South America to Western Europe during 2008 and 2009. There is also an ongoing trial against him for laundering at least 20 million euros acquired through the sale of narcotics.
Veljko Belivuk is known as “Velja Nevolja” (“Velja the Trouble”), Together with other Janjicari members, he is standing trial for multiple criminal acts, including aggravated murder, kidnapping, illicit possession of weapons and explosives and drug trafficking.
Radoje Zvicer is one of the alleged heads of the Kavac drug gang, indicted for creating a criminal organisation and for murdering two members of the rival Skaljari drug gang.
The original article: belongs to Balkan Insight .
