People with red soles

Politicization, criminalization and the corruption of the secret services are so widespread that once a good operative was considered an agent who kept politicians - even ruling ones - then criminals and various problematic characters "on the hook", and now the one who is kept on a leash by the party and the criminals is progressing in the service.

Modern domestic bosses secret services - their names were Pera, Žika, Nikola, Marko or Janko - they wear Rolexes, there are rumors that they have millions in foreign currency accounts in offshore zones, they build buildings, they own bars. In this obscure, controversial and apparently secret world, they frown in the smoke of tompus, belch after steak and chat while pouring expensive wine from a decanter, and they are the loudest when they point out who is the bigger patriot and how they should "be a mother to those who protest - the blockaders". They talk through their teeth as they plot who, among them, could be the next most loyal loyalist of the ruling elite.

Whenever they are seen in the company of wanted persons or hardened criminals, if they ever find themselves in a situation where, with a heavy sigh, they explain "where did you come from", it is realistic to expect that they would be able to say the most eloquent: "On assignment".

And the people? Well, the people pay taxes to provide salaries for BIA officials. However, the secret agents somehow got it into their heads that the people exist for the sake of the state, that is, for the sake of the Service, and that "it's some world over there that doesn't understand a higher goal."

And as per the unwritten rule, a civil servant can no longer create files on others if his personal one is not well prepared with various compromising material, compiled for at least two or three indictments if necessary for "from the sky to the ribs", in case of disobedience or at least for tabloid satanization.

The young generation of BIA loyalists is increasingly coming to the headquarters in Kraljice Ana bb in Belgrade as a family business. Employment usually follows after they are put into service by "someone from the family" or "someone from the party". They have advanced convictions and carry out orders without question because "it is not theirs to think", until they understand how the power system works, then they manage to "finish things for themselves" and progress in the service. As they climb the ladder of power, the lucrative conviction replaces the national, and they wear patriotism as an image with the shoes of the Christian Louboutin brand. The famous "louboutin shoes" with red soles are bought on New York's Fifth Avenue and usually cost around a thousand euros and up. Indeed, the secret agents of tortured Serbia should not be bothered while they figure out how to make life miserable for the paor and the farmer who demands that the Government of the Republic of Serbia fulfill its promises or the teacher who dared not to go to the SNS rally. If they are still following and eavesdropping on environmental activists or activists, they must do so under the heading of "the fight against domestic and international terrorism".

photo: Rade Prelić / Tanjug

PERSECUTION OF PEOPLE

At the same time, in recent years, citizens, students, journalists, and farmers have been illegally invited to visit the BIA, and those who do not respond can face kidnapping. Activists were often put into vans in the middle of the street, driven in an unknown direction and released after a few hours - intimidated, with broken phones or software viruses inserted to monitor the entire communication and phone content.

BIA has been following opposition politicians, even opposition MPs, for years, taking photos of them with family members even when they are on vacation, and delivering those "compromising" photos with compromising text to the tabloids. "Vreme" recently wrote about how MPs Marinika Tepić, Miroslav Aleksić and Radomir Lazović were targeted by spyware and how the private messages of some of them ended up in the tabloids.

The BIA also targets the privacy of judges and prosecutors who refer to the Constitution and laws. Everything that can disturb the peace of those who "stick to the law like a drunkard" is delivered to the tabloids by the BIA. That's how information and photos of rebellious prosecutor Bojana Savović end up on the front pages, it's also known where she drinks coffee and the names of her husband and daughter and where they work... And she's just one in a row.

Even more cruelly, the BIA has been following the police inspectors who discovered Jovanjica, according to the indictment for organized crime, the largest drug plantation in Europe. And the police did not only discover the "skunk factory", they also discovered that members of the BIA were also involved in that business. Several times the weekly "Vreme" wrote about how the former head of the Department for the fight against drugs of the Belgrade police Slobodan Milenković - systematically persecuted after the discovery of Jovanjica - stopped and legitimized his "entourage" and every time they had BIA ID with them.

A new investigation by BIRN shows that the phones of numerous farmers and environmental activists from different parts of Serbia were infected with the NoviSpy spy software during their stay in the premises of the BIA and the police.

These cases were documented with the help of digital forensics and the Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT), developed by Amnesty International. The tool was used by the SHARE Foundation, together with BIRN journalists, to check the phones of farmers and activists. The analysis showed a number of indicators characteristic of NoviSpy, including access to the microphone, camera, messages, location and intensive data traffic to the BIA server.

All of them, due to their activism in agriculture or environmental movements, were invited to interviews or brought to the premises of the BIA and the police in the period between July and October of last year, when there were mass protests in Serbia against Rio Tinto and for the fulfillment of farmers' demands. On that occasion, their phones were temporarily confiscated, and the Android spyware NoviSpy produced by BIA was installed without their knowledge.

Legal experts explained that the use of spyware is not legally regulated, and that its use is difficult to justify due to the high degree of intrusion into personal data.

At the end of last year, the media wrote about the cases of activists Nikola Ristić, Ivan Bjelić, Buki Milosavljević and members of the "Krokodil" organization, in which it was proven that their phones were the target of digital forensics and secret surveillance. In some cases, the data was extracted from the device using the tool of the company "Cellebrite", while in others, after their phones were unlocked, the spy software NoviSpy was additionally installed. According to the findings of the researchers of the international human rights organization "Amnesty International", NoviSpy communicates directly with the server in the BIA.

Due to evidence of abuses, the company "Cellebrite" withdrew licenses for certain users in Serbia in February. However, as reported by Radio Free Europe, the licenses for the MUP were already renewed in April, only two months after their cancellation. In the meantime, a criminal complaint was also filed against unknown persons in the security structures, but progress in this case is minimal so far.

Persons from whom the BIA verbally requests an interview are not obliged to answer their questions and participate in the interview, unless they properly receive the invitation, in accordance with Article 79 of the Law on Police, according to Sofija Mandić's text on the Peščanik portal.

It was, therefore. obliged to send a summons to a person who is reasonably assumed to have information that is part of their jurisdiction (prevention of undermining and subversion of the constitutional order), stating the reason for the summons, the place and time of the interview, as well as the capacity in which the person is summoned. Without such a duly served summons, citizens are not obliged to answer the questions of BIA members. Also, they cannot be held accountable (misdemeanor or criminal) for refusing to be questioned for legal reasons.

"GET OFF KURT TO RIDE MURTH"

Kurta and Murta - these are anthology characters that do not exist in real life and do not refer to specific personalities.

Kurta comes from the Turkish word "kurt", meaning wolf, and Murta from the name Murad - desirable or Murteza, which means chosen or satisfied. In the Dictionary of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, under the term Kurt, there is a definition of this term and it says: when a person in power changes, in what position in general, a social or political change does not represent a fundamental change in relations, does not bring an improvement in circumstances, etc.

photo: муп

As befits today's Security and Information Agency, instead of an official announcement, the public found out through obscure portals and social networks that the head of the BIA operation, Marko Parezanović, has been dismissed, and that the current regional head of the Agency for Vojvodina, Nikola Vasiljević, will take his place.

According to the once Service - always Service matrix, and according to media reports, Parezanović has now been appointed to a far less influential position, as advisor to the director of the BIA. So if anyone remembers to ask him for advice...

Nikola Vasiljević also worked as an adviser to Miloš Vucevic for national security. He started as a BIA agent at the beginning of this century in the Agency's detachment at the Savski Venac police station. Namely, every larger police station in Serbia has several offices in the building, which even honest police officers have avoided in recent years - these are departments, or detachments of the Agency. That's why activists and citizens who were called to talk or detained often did not know who they were actually talking to - policemen or secret agents.

photo: fk vojvodina

The media also wrote that Vasiljević is a member of the Executive Board of the Football Association of Serbia (FSS), but also the owner of the "Decanter" wine shop in Belgrade on the water. As the media reported, the restaurant is owned by his wife. In 2021, opposition politician Borislav Novaković spoke about Vasiljević, when he revealed that Vasiljević was on the Board of Directors of FK Vojvodina. Earlier this year, in an interview for "Vreme", Novaković spoke about the connection between crime, politics and security services in Novi Sad, and then he mentioned Vasiljević.

"Nikola Vasiljević, yesterday's regional head of the BIA, and now Vucevic's security adviser, was and still is friends with Zvonko Veselinović and Goran Kovačević Goranec. That practice remained even after Vasiljević, only now it is closer and stronger. Namely, the current head of the BIA for Novi Sad Bečić, his deputy Simo Aleksić and Goranac have known each other since Vrbas and now 'only the sky is the limit'! That bestiality of Nikola Vasiljevića went so far that he did not hide his corrupt savings. He registered the elite wine shop "Dekanter" in the exclusive part of Belgrade. The estimated value of the wine shop is about two million euros, he said at the time.

In the media, Vasiljević was also associated with Slobodan Milutinović Snajper, a guy from the fierce Novi Sad progressive asphalt, who escaped in 2023 while under house arrest and wearing a leg brace, and the escape became known days later, only when he did not appear at the trial.

In the photo from the assembly of the "Vojvodina" Football Club, which was published on their website a few years ago, in the first row next to the camera, the new chief of operations at BIA, Nikola Vasiljević, is sitting in a gray jacket, and Sloba Sniper can be seen standing in the back in a red shirt (see photo).

photo: n1

When it comes to Marko Parezanović, he is a long-time employee of the BIA, and as the magazine "Poredak" published in 2024 - he spent a quarter of a century in the Service. Before becoming the head of operations, he was the head of the Belgrade center, one of the most important in BIA.

He also likes to engage in academic work, and almost all of his published texts deal with a similar topic: "The importance and role of social networks in political coups", "Coup d'etat as one of the modalities of illegal political struggle" and "The role of propaganda activities in political coups".

In the book Protection of the constitutional order he wrote: "Part of non-governmental organizations are weapons, and very dangerous weapons at that... Nowadays, certain non-governmental organizations have become a mechanism for large-scale anti-constitutional action", "Danas" reported earlier.

Critics point out that Parezanović was not immune to "external factors". The former president of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović, called him the main Russian agent in Serbia. In 2024, he traveled to the International Security Forum in St. Petersburg with the former head of the BIA, Alexander Vulin, and the tiles on the table in front of them revealed that they represented the country there. Parezanović was honored by three presidents - Serbia, Republika Srpska and the Russian Federation.

His name is also mentioned in the police report against Darko Šarić, who is in prison in Serbia, where he was sentenced in 2022 for smuggling 5,7 tons of cocaine. According to the report, which was published by the Crik portal in March of that year, the police determined that Marko Parezanović was hiding behind the nickname "Markus", who was mentioned as a helper of the Šarić clan in the Sky (SKY) communication of members of this criminal group. According to data from Sky messages, he tried to exert influence on the president of the court panel so that Šarić would be given a lighter sentence.

Turn-around BIA has long served only itself. They are often thought to serve the ruling party exclusively, under the pretext of protecting the state. There is some truth in that, but only until that party falls from power.

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