Arrest of a war comrade

From the battlefield, the public's attention is directed towards the turbulent media-propaganda waters. The conflict in the village of Banjska in the north of Kosovo lasted less than a day. However, the "echoes and reactions" continue this week thanks to new details from the investigation, statements from all sides and the arrest of the person who himself admitted to being responsible for the events in Banjska - Milan Radoičić.

This 45-year-old Serb from Peć was detained on Tuesday, October 3, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia announced in the shortest possible statement:

"On October 3, 10, police officers of the Criminal Police Directorate searched the apartment and other premises of Milan Radoičić, who was detained by the police for up to 2023 hours. He was brought to the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade with a criminal complaint."

Later, information from the hearing at the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade arrived:

"Milan R. (45) was questioned at the High Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade today on the suspicion that he and, for now, several unknown persons, committed criminal acts of association for the purpose of committing criminal acts, illegal production, possession, carrying and trafficking of firearms and explosive substances and serious offenses against general safety.

During the hearing, the suspect denied the commission of the criminal acts he was charged with," VJT announced. After the hearing, the prosecution proposed to the judge for preliminary proceedings of the High Court in Belgrade to order the suspect into custody due to the risk of escape.

Photo: AP

The Prosecutor's Office announced a few more interesting details:

"Milan R. is charged that from January 2023 to September 24, he procured weapons, ammunition and explosive devices of great destructive power from Tuzla, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were delivered to him on the territory of the City of Belgrade, most often on the route Bubanj Potok - Vrčin, and which he then transported and stored in unspecified locations on the territory of the AP of Kosovo and Metohija, where he hid them in abandoned buildings and forests, so as the ringleader of a group with more Non-public persons, by joint action and generally dangerous action on September 24, caused a danger to the lives of people in the town of Banjska on the territory of AP KiM."

GROWING UP IN "LORD OF THE NORTH"

Thus, the man who a few days earlier was labeled as a "freedom fighter" and "someone for whom wealth is not important if there is no freedom for Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija", was detained even though he had previously given a statement to the "competent authorities".

Radoicic's voluntary departure to the police and his statement followed on Friday, September 29, when his legal representative, Goran Petronijević, read a letter to the public in the Belgrade Media Center in which he admitted that he had organized and participated in the bloody confrontation in the village of Banjska on September 24 of this year. .

photo: aleksandar levajković / fonet

"I, Milan Radoičić, father Rajko, born in the Republic of Serbia, due to numerous speculations that have appeared, I am informing the public that together with my compatriots from the north of Kosovo and Metohija, on September 24, I came to the north of Kosovo and Metohija, to the village of Banjska. The reason for our return was to encourage the Serbian people from that area to resist the terror to which they are exposed on a daily basis. I inform all the on-duty persecutors of the Serbian people, from Kurti to numerous foreign helpers, that I personally made all logistical preparations for the defense of the people, and this act has nothing to do with my previous political involvement. I didn't inform anyone about this, not even the authorities of the Republic of Serbia, nor did I get any help from them, because we already had different views on resisting Kurti's terror."

This unprecedented event, in which one or more criminal acts are publicly acknowledged, left the Serbian public literally without comment. Namely, people who break the law usually do not hold media conferences in which they explain their actions and behavior.

Of course, Radoičić would never say that he is a criminal or anything like that. He saw himself the way he was presented in the public for the past ten years through the writing of tabloids and media under the control of the authorities, as well as the authorities themselves in the Republic of Serbia. While the media, which tries to do its job in a professional manner, reported years ago about all the "murky affairs" in which Radoičić was involved or could be involved, the government kept him at his knees, and a few years ago he was promoted to the position of vice-president of the Serbian List. , the political faction of the Serbian Progressive Party in Kosovo and Metohija.

In addition to being directly involved in political life and appearing as such in the institutions of the Republic of Serbia and at official state events, sitting together with the President of the Republic and members of the Government, and being a regular at the sessions of the Assembly as a guest on the balcony of the great hall, Radoičić previously engaged in lucrative business together with his main partner Zvonko Veselinović and managed to build a business empire worth hundreds of millions of euros.

The two of them became the main contractors for infrastructural works in Serbia and over the years they have grown so much that they own several construction companies, several quarries and hundreds of the most expensive machines and trucks necessary for the construction of roads in Serbia. In parallel with those jobs, which can be seen by anyone who travels around Serbia, because they will surely run into the trucks of the companies "Inkop", "Nukleus", "Novi Pazar put" (to mention the biggest ones), Radoičić and Veselinović were engaged in organized crime - as assessed in last year's Treasury document of the US Department of the Treasury. Then they were put on the black list of this institution. From that moment on, they were contaminated for everyone who could do business with them and, of course, were condemned to stay and work only within the Republic of Serbia.

If Veselinović remained invisible to the general public all these years and took good care not to appear anywhere, not to make any statement or to be publicly associated with some events in Serbia, Radoičić actively "got involved in politics". This was seen after one of the elections in which the Serbian List won all the votes of the Serbs in Kosovo (as it was presented to the public), in that famous video from Kosovska Mitrovica in which Radoičić opens champagne with Marko Đurić - now the ambassador to the USA - and chants into the phone "Aco Srbine" in Vučić's ear.

Radoičić, as time will show, had a special role in disciplining the Serbs, in the process of establishing control, but also in joint affairs with the Kosovo Albanians, especially with the "Dečan current" led by Ramuš Haradinaj. Since the establishment of complete control over the fate and votes of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija, sometime in 2014, 2015, Radoičić has grown into the master of the North of Kosovo. That is, into a person whose affairs and deeds have yet to be fully investigated and exposed.

STATE PET

This journalist has been to the North of Kosovo several times and is a witness that the name of Milan Radoičić was not mentioned in vain and without immediate need, it is never spoken out loud in public, and he has repeatedly heard the term "those from the mountain" from local residents. It was a metaphor for the group of Radoičić and Veselinović and their stay on Kopaonik.

On that mountain, in 2011, "that government" headed by Boris Tadić arrested the Veselinović brothers, who were recognized by the international community as the culprits of the incidents in the north of Kosovo in the summer of 2011, in which a German soldier was killed. Now a Kosovo policeman was killed "in the line of duty" - while he was performing his duty - and that fact triggered a series of events and consequences whose end is now in sight.

What can be seen is that Radoičić, after a series of praises at his own expense, after years of luxurious life - cynics would say on construction sites - liked prisons in Serbia. Now the question is in the coming days and weeks who will decide on his further fate and in what way.

It turns out that in a short time Radoičić did several incredible things by himself: he organized a group of armed men with whom he transferred heavy weapons to the north of Kosovo; caused a small war in Banjska that claimed at least four lives; he spoke after five days of absence and acknowledged the act that he saw as the beginning of the fight against the occupiers, unlike the majority of the world that sees it as an act of terrorism. It is even more important that Radoičić took responsibility, and it seems that his self-sacrificing act of defending the Government and the President of Serbia led to the media praising and celebrating him for several days, without the police arresting him right away.

What did the regime in Serbia not say and communicate denying Radoicic's involvement. And when he himself admitted, then they explained that this mini-war was a necessary defense against Kurti's terror, as Radoičić himself qualified it in his letter.

MEETING PLACE DIPPER

Photo: Printscreen

In the meantime, the police in Kosovo raided the facilities owned by Milan Radoičić - those he has in North Mitrovica as well as on Lake Gazivode. This was used for an additional media blow, as videos of the villa were released, which even Russian tycoons on the French Riviera would not be ashamed of. Radoičić thus quickly became a tycoon and bon vivant from a "man from the street", as described by Vučić. It is also clear that numerous furnished construction jobs brought him earnings that enabled him to build on Gazivode and Kopaonik. By the way, this mountain has become a Mecca for Radoičić and his partner Zvonko Veselinović's investments in recent years.

Everyone knows about the Gorski and Gray hotels (hidden behind the romantic name of the company Dolly Bell), which in a short time became symbols of luxury and enjoyment of the new generation of Serbian rich people and the new elite on one of the most expensive mountains in Europe. This year, Radoičić entered into a new project of building an even bigger hotel at the location behind the Gray Hotel, right next to the funicular that leads from the center to the Mali Karaman trail. All those investments of everything else that they planned to do on Golija Mountain are the result of incredible profits that were made in circumstances that cannot be called completely legal. And all that is now called into question, or may be called into question, if the investigation against Radoičić leads to a serious indictment or forces Serbia to hand him over to the Kosovo judiciary.

Serbia is under some kind of pressure, but as the days go by, we see that this pressure is greater from the European Union than from the USA. On the day when Radoičić was arrested, it was not Vučić who spoke, but American Ambassador Hill, who is always ready to praise and push things towards the end of the process.

"I think that the arrest of Radoičić, who seems to have admitted his guilt for most of the things that happened, was a good step. However, I think we all want to know what this is really about, what they wanted to achieve, where did they get all those weapons and ammunition", Hill said in an interview with the Tanjug agency.

In the days ahead, everyone will face greater challenges, and the hardest will be for the Serbian community in Kosovo. She is now additionally marked, mistrust towards her has increased, and there is nothing to say that Albin Kurti will give up his intention to arrest and prosecute all those he has marked as persons who have some connection with the Serbian security system.

photo: printscreen

The north of Kosovo is now cut off from Serbia in a way that no Albanian politician could have imagined ten years ago, when it was accepted that Serbia controlled that territory in different ways. Ten years of the Brussels Agreement wiped out the formal presence of Serbian institutions, and the Serbs, as many times in history, were left to people who got rich fighting for what they call "freedom for all citizens".

Vučić will continue to do what he has been doing until now despite these unforeseen events, and he will do everything to prevent his connection with this event from being proven, which now seems like an impossible mission. It can "save" him only if the whole operation was in cooperation with someone from outside, and it was not the Russians. When a German soldier was killed in Jarinje 12 years ago, the consequences followed a year later, when Boris Tadić was no longer president, and Vučić formed the government. Whether history will repeat itself after the new elections, we may find out faster than it seems.