A death from which Serbia has not recovered

On Sunday, March 12, it will be exactly 20 years since the Prime Minister of Serbia and the leader of the Democratic Party, Zoran Djindjic, was killed at the entrance to the Serbian Government building. The killers were members of the "Red Berets" and the Zemun clan. During the following years, the court determined - precisely and clearly - who participated in the assassination and who had what role. As is known, this was the last in a series of attacks on the life of the late prime minister – an educated, civilized, pro-Western oriented and smiling man. Djindjic, some will say, was killed by the state itself.

Tomislav Nikolić, a radical at the time, was certainly not surprised by the assassination, who announced it in his own peculiar, creepy-quasi-spiritual way. Today's President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has never denied the statement that on March 12, 2003, he "passed out" in elation over the death of a political opponent. And their boss Vojislav Šešelj, who went to The Hague a little earlier, practically announced the Prime Minister's death when he spoke of a "bloody spring".

While Zvezdan Jovanović was cleaning the murder weapon with a wooden pick in preparation for action, Milošević's wife Mirjana Marković slipped away to Russia. It is also unclear whether certain people from Kostunica's cabinet were surprised, for example journalist Aleksandar Tijanić, author of the "famous" sentence "If Đinđić survives, Serbia will not". Maybe even some people from Djinđić's closest circle were not informed, but we won't talk about that because we would be directly entering the "twilight zone"...

Read on full text by Nedimo Sejdinović in the weekly "Vreme" from Thursday (March 9)