Milorad Ulemek

Milorad "Legija" Ulemek (born 15 March 1965) is a Serbian former police commander who served as head of the Special Operations Unit during the Kosovo War. Ulemek has long faced accusations of being involved with organized crime, and was eventually convicted of conspiring with Serbian organized crime gangs to assassinate Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, as well as conspiring to assassinate former President Ivan Stambolić and opposition leader Vuk Drašković.

Biography

Ulemek was born in Belgrade on 15 March 1965. He was a troubled teenager, and began committing robberies until he was eventually forced to flee the country in 1985 to avoid arrest. He hid out in France until 1992, when he returned to Serbia.

Upon returning to Serbia, Ulemek joined the Serb Volunteer Guard under Željko Ražnatović, fighting in the Bosnian War and the Croatian War of Independence. Ulemek became commander of the "Super Tigrovi" unit until the Serb Volunteer Guard were disbanded in 1996 by Jovica Stanišić, at which point he joined the Special Operations Unit, or Red Berets. He was appointed leader in 1999. Under his leadership, the Red Berets carried out special operations in Kosovo and eliminated political opponents of President Slobodan Milošević. He officially resigned as leader in 2001, but continued to coordinate operations for the group until it was disbanded in 2003.

Trials

Ulemek was indicted in 2003 after an investigation concluded that the Special Operations Unit had been responsible for the 2000 disappearance of former Serb President Ivan Stambolić, who had been expected to oppose President Milošević in the upcoming election, and the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, who was shot by a sniper on 12 March 2003. It was also found that the unit had conspired with the Zemun Clan crime syndicate to kill Prime Minister Đinđić. Furthermore, Ulemek himself was identified as the perpetrator of a 1999 attempt to kill Serb opposition leader Vuk Drašković by ramming his car with a lorry full of sand, which killed Drašković's brother-in-law and three of his bodyguards.

Upon hearing of the indictment, Ulemek hid in his house for fourteen months until he eventually surrendered in May 2004. He was first convicted of the attack on Drašković in June 2005 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was then convicted of Ivan Stambolić's murder, for which he received a 40-year prison term. Finally, he received another 40-year sentence for the murder of Prime Minister Đinđić, alongside his deputy Zvezdan Jovanović.