While Belivuk and Miljković kidnapped and slaughtered victims in Ritopek, and threw their remains into the river, the police boasted that the crime statistics in Serbia had never been better and that the rate of murders and street fights had decreased. There is no body, no negative statistics, and now the defendants hoped that there was no crime. While Velja and Mare cruised around Belgrade in armored cars, no one eavesdropped or followed them. Absurdly, the victims of the clan were the victims of the eavesdropping and monitoring by the police, in the moments when they were abducted and killed. Some of the victims were also police informers and would just disappear one day, that is, end up in Ritopek, where no one was looking for them. These disappearances are hidden from the public, even those that would have happened in broad daylight in the elite neighborhoods of Belgrade, which are under the surveillance of security cameras. Before Ritopek, some of the victims were first taken to the fans' rooms at the Partizan stadium, almost in the center of the Serbian capital. And no one responded, for years. Admittedly, several policemen tried, who would immediately lose their positions, as well as several journalists, who would be declared enemies of the state. It was silent until several foreign services began to spread the word that we have "Mexico in the middle of Belgrade" and until the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, announced war on the mafia in October 2020 via Instagram.
For a year and a little more than eight months, the members of the organized criminal group Belivuk have been in the custody of the Special Court building in Belgrade. Despite "all" the evidence that the public had the opportunity to see during the lengthy address of the President of the State and the Minister of the Interior on Pink Television, when the photos of the massacred victims were shown for the first time, it seems that something stuck. Except for the preliminary hearings, the trial cannot begin.
VICTIMS
According to the indictment, the list of victims of the clan includes: Aleksandar Gligorijević - Puki, Goran Veličković - Goksi, Lazar Vukićević, Zdravko Radojević, Milan Ljepoja, Nikola Mitić and Goran Mihajlović. Those persons were considered missing in the period from April 2019 to December 2020. The investigation established that all the victims were abducted, tortured in a house in Ritopek, killed, and that their bodies were then destroyed. All the victims were from a criminal environment and were suspected of collaborating with the Skaljar clan. According to the indictment, the defendant Marko Miljković regularly sent information about the atrocities committed against the victims, as well as photos of their torture and massacre of the bodies, via the Sky application to an unknown person, who is suspected to actually be Radoje Zvicer. After a set of photographs of the victims, Miljković would write: "...Let me send you the pictures of the slaughterhouses that we have with you, so that they don't get deleted because only I have them... all of them were executioners, not some civilians."
By being proud of the atrocities and showing them off, Miljković actually built a case against the entire clan himself.
INDICTMENTS
In July 2021, the first indictment was brought against the Belivuk-Miljković clan. The first indictment charges 30 members of the clan with kidnapping, torture, five murders, one rape, and unauthorized trade in weapons and drugs. The second indictment was confirmed by the court in June 2022, it charges two more members of the clan, who, together with the other defendants, are accused of two more kidnappings and murders. Neither the first nor the expanded indictment deal with the clan's ties to certain state structures, nor its activities until 2019. The indictments do not deal with the political connections of the clan, nor with the dozens of other victims cited in the transcripts of the conversation between Marko Miljković and an unknown person on the Sky secret communication application.
MURDER IN MONTENEGRO
In Montenegro, they are charged with the murder of a member of the Skaljar clan Damir Hodžić and his son-in-law Adis Spahić near Danilovgrad, as well as the kidnapping of Mile Radulović, known as the Captain, who was later handed over to the Kavačka clan and liquidated. While Velja and Mare were on an "assignment" in Montenegro, with the help of an unlocked phone with the Sky app, taken from the Captain, they lured a member of the Skaljars, Lazar Vukićević, to Belgrade, where he was liquidated by other members of the clan in Ritopek.
ALEKSANDAR STANKOVIĆ SALE MUTAVI
01 - 01...
Killed in October 2016, Stanković is the founder and first leader of the "Janjičari" hooligan group, from which Belivuk's "Principles" will later emerge. Before taking over the southern stand, he was a Red Star fan. Convicted on several occasions, mostly for drug trafficking, Stanković avoided serving a prison sentence as many as twelve times, including the moment when he was liquidated.
He became known to the public because of a video in which he and Belivuk are seen beating a security member of the general director of FC Partizan, Miloš Vazura. His liquidation, a classic mafia coup, has never been resolved, but it is believed that Stevan Stamatović, a high-ranking member of the Skaljars, was killed in 2020 in Athens. After Stanković's murder, the Minister of Police at the time, Nebojša Stefanović, declared war on the mafia, while Partizan football players had to wear T-shirts with his image in the next game. In the seized notes of the former head of the Service for Special Investigative Methods, Dejan Milenkovic-Bagzi, who is otherwise a close associate of the former MUP State Secretary Dijana Hrkalović, Sala Mutavi was designated as a "state project". You can read the entire text about Salet Mutava in this issue of the weekly "Vreme".
MIRKO KOJIC WHICH
Mirko Kojic, the murdered godfather of Miljkovic. photo: Printscreen/TV Inside...
He was a high-ranking member of the Belivuk clan and Marko Miljković's godfather. He is a former policeman and later the owner of Alfa Taxi. He was linked to the murder of one of the co-owners of Pink Taxi, Teodoro Gaćeša, and later to the disappearance of another. It is believed that Miljković also had a hand in these cases. In the case of murder on the tracks, Kojić had the task of securing a car for liquidation, and when Belivuk and Miljković were discovered, Koja fled and remained in hiding until the end of the investigation against them. All traces of him are lost in January 2020, and it is assumed that he ended up in Ritopek. After his disappearance, Mare Mesar boasted that he had "done" two godfathers. As the weekly "Vreme" learns, the new expansion of the indictment against the clan should also charge them with the murder of Kojić, which, according to unofficial information, the police recently shed light on.
MLADEN NENADIĆ, PROSECUTOR
He is the head of the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime and the signatory of the indictment against the Belivuk-Miljković clan. By the way, this is the first indictment that Nenadić personally signed since he became the head of TOK. Two other deputy prosecutors are working with him on this case. We are talking about Saša Ivanić and Zoran Babić, who conducted almost all the interviews with the suspects, witnesses and victims.
SKY APPLICATION
Application for mobile phones for secret communication Sky (Sky). That application has become globally popular and current among criminals since 2018. Through it, it was possible to exchange text and voice messages, while calls were disabled. The application could only be installed on certain Nokia and iPhone models and during communication it was not possible to monitor the communication or the location from which users are writing.
In Belgrade, Sky could be installed on the black market through legal shops for mobile phones, the subscription to the application for several months was from 300 to 1200 euros. In the summer of 2020, foreign services discovered and decrypted Sky's servers, thus finding billions of messages exchanged between criminals around the world. The Europol and Eurojust services, through their centers in France, the Netherlands and Belgium, distribute the correspondence and send it to the countries where it originated. However, not all three countries were equally successful in decryption: for example, Belgium cracked the most messages because they used better decryption software. Also, it is not certain that all the exposed messages were delivered. The Belivuk-Miljković clan exchanged photos of the butchered bodies of their victims, and it was precisely these messages that first attracted the attention of foreign services.
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RITOPEK
A settlement in the municipality of Grocka in the City of Belgrade. At the end of Ulica Livadice there is a house of horrors. The house was covered by strong video surveillance. After the clan moved into it, and by order of "Srbija puta", the street was paved. It is unclear why the road in Olica Livadice was paved at that time. However. the public speculated that in this way, the powerful from public companies enabled criminals to move faster and to bring their victims and parts of their bodies along this route, in order to destroy evidence by throwing them into the Danube.
SECURITY CAMERAS IN RITOPEK
05 - 14...
The entire house used by the Belivuk-Miljković clan was under video surveillance. The cameras were aimed at the yard, but also at the entire street, as well as the surroundings of the house. Public concern was caused by the information that the security services had their own cameras around the house of horrors through which they followed the clan before the arrest. The authorities never answered the question: does this mean that some crimes could have been prevented and why they were not? Evidence of where Milan Ljepoja, known as one of the leaders of the Pink Panther gang, was last seen was also shown on Pink Television over the weekend. Recordings of the conversation were also released, showing how the murder was being planned, but also how Belivuk's associates were talking about the fact that Ljepoja was no longer there, since the crime had been committed. Retired employee of DB Božidar Spasić said on Pink that the footage of the preparation of the liquidation and the moments when Ljepoja was last seen alive were recorded by the cameras of the security services. "They thought that the Service did not control them," he said. "You can also see the date, it is before the liquidation of Milan Ljepoja, December 8." The evidence material was interpreted for the public by the owner of a tabloid: "They contacted him, they told him: we need to see each other, to talk, at our house in Ritopek, and here he is sitting in the passenger seat, getting inside and never again don't go out.”
It is unclear, if the police had information that the murder was being planned, why they did not prevent it or invite Belivuk and his associates to an informative interview, since Ljepoja's disappearance was reported. Let us remind you that on December 9, 2020, the war on the mafia was already widely announced.
SECRET ROOM IN RITOPEK
Ritopek. House for torture and murder. photo: MUP of Serbia...
After the arrest of the clan, on February 4, 2021, the police investigated the house in Ritopek for weeks. Wells, dug-up fields and surrounding yards were also inspected in order to find solid evidence, i.e. material traces of the murders. However, for all that time there were no results. There was information that there was a secret torture room in the house of horrors, but the police could not find it. Surveyors came to the site of the investigation several times to inspect the premises and walls, and they did not notice anything suspicious. It wasn't until late April of that year that crime inspectors noticed that they couldn't move a tool shelf in the garage because it was screwed to the wall. Behind that shelf was a secret passage that led to a dark room. It was a room for torture and killing, and an industrial meat grinder was found in it, where the bodies of the victims were destroyed. The walls of the secret room were spattered with the blood of the murdered. That discovery was the hardest blow for the clan, then the evidence was collected which, together with the Sky application and witnesses, built the indictments against them.
COOPERATING WITNESSES
In exchange for lesser prison terms, release from custody and custody in secure locations, the three clan members struck a deal with the prosecution and agreed to testify against their former associates. However, as time passes, other members of the clan, including the owner of the house in Ritopek, Vlade Draganić, want an agreement with the prosecutors. Part of the public rightly questions why the prosecution needs so many witnesses considering the existence of Sky correspondence, which were presented in the pro-regime media as irrefutable evidence. The reason lies in the fact that it is still not possible to determine with certainty whether the judges will accept them as evidence, given that they were not obtained according to the legal procedure, but were only sent to the Serbian investigative bodies from foreign services. For now, Nikola Spasojević, Bojan Hrvatin and Srđan Lalić will testify against the clan.
BOJAN HROATIN ANAKIN AND LEO
Called Fabula and 39 years old, he joined Veljko Belivuk's gang at the end of May 2020, when he was released from prison for murder. The prosecution took him as a witness in the first indictment, which accuses the group of five serious murders committed from June 2020 until the breakup of the clan. He was not at the top of the clan, and according to the indictment, he mainly worked on luring victims and removing evidence after the liquidations. According to his own testimony, his "baptism of fire" was the luring of Goran Veličković - Goksi, the leader of a rival group of Partizan fans who was later killed in Ritopek. Goksi believed until the very end that the Croatian did not set him up and that he was trying to protect him. This cooperating witness told the prosecution that the Belivuk clan was also behind the murder of one of the leaders of the "undertaker" factions, Ljubomir Marković - Kića, in 2019. However, Hrvatin has no direct knowledge of who is the direct perpetrator in all the murders, but only indirectly, from conversations with other members of the gang. Also, as he told the prosecution, he is not that well versed in the drug business either.
NIKOLA SPASOJEVIĆ TOPALOVIĆ
By extending the indictment to the murders of Nikola Mitić in August 2020, as well as Goran Mihajlović in April 2019, the prosecution takes Nikola Spasojević, Marko Miljković's godfather, as a witness. He is known by the nickname Spale and is 31 years old. He also did not participate directly in the murders, nor did he ever attend the liquidations, but mostly afterwards cleaned and whitewashed the secret room in Ritopek - he is a painter by profession. The defendants, when they describe Spasojević to the prosecutors, say that he is in a difficult mental state - depressed and in constant fear for his life and the lives of his family members. His testimony, as well as messages through Sky, indicate that his mental disorder occurred even before his arrest. Every time Miljković invited him to come to Ritopek, he feared that he might be the next to end up in the meat grinder.
SRĐAN LALIĆ BARRY MILLS
He has been a member of the organized criminal group "Principi" since 2019. Lalić agreed with the prosecution to testify against the rest of the group in exchange for 18 years in prison. It is interesting that Lalić offered the prosecution a similar proposal last year, but it was rejected. Since in some murders he is the direct perpetrator, he cannot be an accomplice witness, but is treated as an accused witness. He is the only one of the three witnesses who can tell the prosecutors the details of the murder of Goran Mihajlović from 2019, and it is speculated that he could also "sing" about the earlier murders of the clan, as well as the liquidation of Mirko Kojić - Koja (46) from 2019. Lalic's uncle is the ambassador of Serbia in Moscow, Momčilo Babić, former personal physician of radical leader Vojislav Šešelj and former president of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić. Lalić is 37 years old.
THE LEADER OF THE CLAN
Veljko Belivuk on Sky is known as "Soprano" and Marko Miljković as "Kratos" and "Leon", and they are accused in Serbia of having organized and led a criminal group, responsible for seven serious murders, kidnappings, torture, rape, illegal detention arms and drug trafficking. It is suspected that they also killed on the territory of Montenegro, and most of the murders were committed on the orders of the leader of the Kavački clan, Radoj Zvicer. Immediately before their arrest on February 4, 2021, Belivuk and Miljković stayed in Kotor as guests of Zvicer, it is suspected that a rival clan was preparing to assassinate them.
GREAT BELLIVUK
Velja Nevolja, founder and leader of the hooligan group "Principi", which was a front for the criminal clan Belivuk-Miljković. Unlike most of the "Janjičar" hooligans, who escaped from the Marakana, Belivuk came to the southern stand as a fan of FC Rada. He was previously convicted, and in 2017 he was the first suspect in the murder of the karate player Vlastimir Milošević on the railway tracks, but due to the magical disappearance of evidence, he was ultimately acquitted. He decided on life and death, that is, on who would end his journey in the Ritopek slaughterhouse, and he personally judged some victims. The clan he led, and which many justifiably considered to be a "state project", represented the striking fist of the Kavčans in Serbia.
MARKO MILJKOVIC
The right-hand man of the Marko Miljković clan, known as Mare Mesar, was primarily responsible for luring victims and their liquidation. According to witness statements, he himself claimed that he was not too interested in "cheering", and allegedly he was best at impersonating members of a rival clan on a cryptographic application. Further: the witness, the accused Croatian, said that Mara and Velje were "one" in the planning. He boasted that he had "done" two godfathers. In the detention unit of the Special Court building, he often sent warning "messages" to yesterday's associates who agreed to testify against the clan. It is suspected that he was involved in some earlier unsolved murders, and during the liquidation on the tracks he was suspected of being an accomplice. News max Adria learned that his grandfather Svetozar Vujacic was an adviser to Aleksandar Vulin, which the latter denied.
MEMBERS OF THE CLAN
In addition to Belivuk and Miljković, the indictment includes 28 other members of the clan. Some of them have been there from the start, while others have joined later – usually as they get out of prison. In addition to those already mentioned, some of the most important for the saga of the Belivuk clan are the brothers Budimir and Vladimir Grek, Boris Karapandžić, as well as Vlada Draganić.
MILOS AND MARKO BUDIMIR ARES AND CANTONA
Brothers Miloš (38) and Marko (34) Budimir are accused according to the indictment of having participated in luring, kidnapping, killing victims, as well as drug trafficking. They occupied important positions in the clan, and the witness, the accused Croatin, stated that "they were good from the beginning" with Belivuk and Miljković. One of those liquidated, Zdravko Radojević, was lured precisely with their help. Radojević was the godfather of Miloš Budimir, who, according to Hrvatin's testimony, to Belivuk's question "come on, brothers, who is going to save him", immediately answered "I won't, he is my godfather". According to the statements of the same witness, Miloš participated in the kidnapping, beating and torture of Lazar Vukićević. The brothers were previously imprisoned for drug trafficking.
Grek Vladimir photo: private...
VLADIMIR GREK RAGNAROT
Vladimir Greko's name appears in both indictments against the clan and he is charged with drug trafficking - for which he has been convicted twice before. He worked at the Hygiene Committee in Pancevo, and SSP MP Marinika Tepić identified him as one of the organizers of the torchlight and chanting against the opposition and Dragan Đilas at the end of April 2020.
BORIS KARAPANDŽIĆ SALVATORE
Karapandzic Boris photo: private...
In addition to the indictment against the Belivuk clan, which charges them with drug trafficking, Karapandžić is also being prosecuted for the demolition of the Komitet nightclub in 2018. So far, he has been convicted of drug trafficking, possession of weapons, and the demolition of the "Hollywood" cafe owned by former Partizan fan leader Aleksandar Vavić in Karaburma in 2013. He is 35 years old.
VLADA DRAGANIĆ BRALE AND BOSKE
The indictment primarily charges him with illegal possession of weapons. Around 100 weapons were found in a cottage in Ritopek, which is otherwise owned by him, but the police were unable to determine how the clan got hold of it. Draganić is 48 years old, and allegedly he recently offered himself to the prosecution to make an agreement in exchange for his testimony.
Vladimir Georgiev, pseudonym, With Growth....
VLADO GEORGIEV
A former policeman from Loznica, fired while working in Belgrade for cooperating with criminals. His original name was Dragan Sekulić at first in order to change it more clearly. Sekulić was also the manager of rapper Stefan Đurić Rasta, who was arrested for narcotics. Along with Dragan Sekulić, his wife Slađana Sekulić was also arrested as part of the clan, and after several months of detention, she defends herself from freedom.
LAWYERS
The most significant name in legal practice related to the Belivuk clan is certainly the lawyer Dejan Lazarevic. Representing most of the members of the clan since before the arrest, he assured them all the time that the indictment was on glass feet.
DEJAN LAZAREVIĆ, FORMER DEFENSE LAWYER
Belgrade lawyer known for representing some of the strongest players of the current Balkan underworld. He was the defender of Dejan Stojanović - Keke, one of the leaders of the "Amerika" clan, the famous drug lord Darko Šarić, then the leader of the Kavački clan, Radoj Zvicer, but also most of the members of the Belivuk clan, and is also the link that connects them all. In his case, it is suspected that lawyer's work also includes mediation services during the commission of criminal acts. He was arrested in April of this year together with Darko Šarić, and he is accused of arranging the liquidation of the witness associate Nebojša Joksović, a former close friend of Šarić, with other members of the clan through the Sky application. With the arrest of Lazarevic, the defense of Belivuk's group has been significantly weakened, and lately members of the clan cannot find a lawyer who "suits" them.
The investigation against the clan established that the lawyer Lazarevic also gave the house owned by Darko Šarić to the leaders Belivuk and Miljković. And from the correspondence through the Sky application, it was learned that after a meeting with Dejan Lazarevic, the leaders of the clan told other associates that he had told them that the whole of Belgrade was talking about the severed head of Goran Veličković - Goksi.
In the next issue: how the clan was created under the auspices of political and state protection. Interesting details about the case known as "murder on the rails". You will read about the connections of the Belivuk-Miljković clan with other clans (Kavački, Šarićev, clan "Amerika"). But you will also find out how intense connections Velja Nevolja and Mare Mesar had with state and police officials
