Members of the organized criminal group "Principi", i.e. Veljko Belivuk's gang, which originated from that fan group from the south stand of the Partizan stadium, were accused of seven serious murders, kidnapping, torture, rape, illegal possession of weapons, and drug trafficking. Given that they mostly liquidated their victims in a cottage in Ritopek - they called it a slaughterhouse - and destroyed the bodies with a meat grinder, burning and various chemicals, there is almost no biological evidence. The prosecutors had to base the indictment on decrypted correspondence via the secret communication application "Skaj", but more importantly - on the witnesses.
THREE PROBLEMS
There are already two witnesses in the process. Both are gang members, but they are not direct perpetrators of criminal acts. They mostly participated in luring victims or destroying traces. According to the first indictment, which charges the group with five murders that took place from June 2020 until the clan was broken up in early February 2021, the only witness is Bojan Hrvatin. From June to December of the same year, Aleksandar Gligorijević Puki, Goran Veličković Goksi, Lazar Vukićević, Zdravko Radojević and Milan Ljepoja were killed.
As a witness, the Croatian is certainly useful. However, he only has indirect knowledge, everything he knows he heard from gang members who belonged to the "heart of darkness". The problem is that he was released from prison, where he was imprisoned for drug trafficking, only on May 28, 2020. That's when he joined the gang, so he can only testify about the murders that happened after that.
The second indictment includes two more murders, namely that of Nikola Mitić on August 10, 2020 and Goran Mihajlović on April 1, 2019. For the murder of Mihajlović, which was not included in the first indictment, Hrvatin cannot be a witness because he was not a member of a criminal group at the time. For this reason, the prosecution reached an agreement with another member of the criminal group. We are talking about Nikola Spasojević, the godfather of Marko Miljković, the right-hand man of Veljko Belivuk.
photo: nova.rs…and a house in Ritopek
The prosecutors encountered serious problems here as well. Namely, Spasojević was not present when the murders took place, so he did not immediately notice who was the direct perpetrator in which case. Everything he knows, he knows from talking to members of the group. Furthermore, Spasojević, at least as described by the defendants when addressing the prosecutors, is in a difficult mental state - he is depressed and in constant fear for his life and the lives of his family members. His testimony, as well as messages via "Sky", indicate that his mental disorder occurred even before his arrest. Every time Miljkovic invited him to come to Ritopek - usually to destroy tracks or paint, since he is a painter by trade - he feared that he might be the next to end up in the meat grinder. Quite specifically - that he will be the third godfather of Miljković who was liquidated by him.
While everyone was in the detention unit of the Special Court building, Marko Miljković, according to the sources, was finding a way to send a message to Spasojević "that he will be slaughtered". Miljković also did not hesitate to send prosecutor Saša Ivanić letters from his cell in which he let him know that he knew in which room Spasojević was kept. From the moment they made an agreement with the prosecution, Hrvatin and Spasojević were released to defend themselves, but they are guarded by the police.
The third problem is that the evidence obtained through the "Sky" application cannot be used on its own. In all previous proceedings, the indictment, partially based on the correspondence from the "Skaj" application, was strengthened by witnesses. When the former SBPOK inspector Božidar Stolic was sentenced last month to two years in prison for giving confidential information to people close to Belivuk, the prosecutor failed to prove through electronic evidence that the messages were exchanged by the accused, and the testimony of the second defendant was necessary.
With this evidence, the fact that it was not collected in accordance with the legal procedure can be problematic. Taking into account the danger of overturning the evidence from "Skaj" in court, as well as the fact that Hrvatin does not know enough, and that Spasojević can hardly bear the pressure, the prosecution reached out to the third witness - Srđan Lalić.
THE KILLER WITH A SMILE
Due to the fact that in some acts he is also the immediate perpetrator, such as in the cases of the murder of Lazar Vukićević and Milan Ljepoja, Lalić cannot become a protected witness, but he can be a witness-accused. Such a practice is not unknown in countries that have experience in war with the mafia. Probably the best example is John Jairo Velázquez, aka Popeye - the hired killer of Pablo Escobar who in exchange for testifying against the Medellin cartel received 23 years in prison in the USA. Before that, he admitted that he had liquidated 257 people. Also, the Italian judge Giovanni Falcone took Tomaso Bušeta, a high-ranking mobster, as a witness, so that his testimony would result in the arrest of more than 400 members of the mafia.
Srdjan Lalić, known as "Berry Mills" on "Skaj", was born in 1985 in Belgrade. According to the indictment, he has been a member of the organized criminal group "Principi" since 2019. Unlike most criminals, Lalić has a university degree and is an IT engineer by profession. He also worked in the Republic Health Insurance Fund (RFZO) as an IT specialist, and allegedly also traded cryptocurrencies. His uncle is Momčilo Babić, former physician of radical leader Vojislav Šešelj and former president of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić. Currently, Babić is the ambassador of Serbia in Moscow and a former member of the Serbian Progressive Party.
In its announcement, the Freedom and Justice Party accused Babić of employing his nephew in the RFZO in However, what causes certain speculations in the public is that Lalić offered to be a witness-defendant once before, but the prosecution refused him.
What has changed? Since then, two significant things have happened for Lalić. First, he changed his lawyer because Dejan Lazarevic, who represented him, as well as the rest of Belivuk's gang, and earlier also Radoj Zvicer and Darko Saric, was arrested with the latter and charged with serious crimes.
By the way, the "Skaj" correspondence shows that Lazarević was privy to at least some murders of the clan: after the liquidation of Goran Veličković in August 2020, he told Belivuk and Miljković that "the whole town is talking about the severed head." Another important change in Lalić's environment is that his uncle Momčilo Babić was elected ambassador only in February of this year, which makes it clear that he has also strengthened his political position in the party.
Srđan Lalić is the only one of the three witnesses who can tell the prosecutors about the murder of Goran Mihajlović from April 2019. It is also speculated that his task will be to shed light on the murder of Mirko Kojić (46), another godfather of Marko Miljković who disappeared at the end of January 2020. year. Some murders from 2015 and 2016 that have to do with Belivuk and Miljković may also be found on the plate that Lalić offers to the prosecution.
ENOUGH HAS BEEN PASSED.
In the "Skaj" correspondence between Marko Miljković and an unknown person, who is suspected to be the head of the Kavački clan, Radoje Zvicer, from January 24, 2020, Miljković sends photos taken in the torture room in Ritopek. On them is Goran Mihajlović with the description "look how the skaljarac went last summer".
After the photos, Miljković sends the messages "oh, a lot of them passed through that room, it's a slaughterhouse for me" and "they disappear and there's no stress". Mihajlović was killed a year earlier in April, while all the other victims covered by the indictment were liquidated after this communication - from June 2020 until the end of the year. In the translation, Miljković explains to the interlocutor that in the period up to 2020, a lot of people "passed" through Ritopek, and not only Mihajlović, as stated in the indictment. Consequently, it can be concluded from that correspondence that from April 2019 to January 2020, there was another series of victims, kidnapped, tortured and killed in Ritopek. The question arises as to who they are and how many there are. If Miljković's messages are to be believed - certainly not a little.
Bojan Hrvatin did not witness this because he was in prison. Nikola Spasojević never occupied a more important position in the gang, nor was he entrusted with more important tasks such as liquidations. That is why it is not an illogical move by the prosecution to offer an agreement to Lalić - maybe with his help the indictment will be expanded once again?
In order for Srđan Lalić to become a witness-accused, his agreement with the prosecution must be confirmed. The Special Court is on the move.
Mirko Kojić, a former policeman and later the owner of a detective agency and Alfa Taxi, worked closely with Belivuk's gang; some even consider him to be one of its founders. As the investigative journalists of the show "Slucaj" established, Kojić was one of the suspects in the murder of Teodor Gaćeša, co-owner of Pink Taxi, who was killed in 2015. In addition to him, in the events that will follow, which include threats to the other co-owner of the taxi, Miroslav Ranković, and later his disappearance in 2016, it is assumed that Marko Miljković also participated.
When karate player Vlastimir Milošević, also Miljković's godfather, was killed on the tram tracks in 2017, and he was arrested together with Belivuk, the police issued a warrant for Mirko Kojić as well. However, he was already on the run until the warrant was dismissed, that is, until the final acquittal.
Let us remind you that the trial for the murder on the rails caused a huge public scandal because key evidence, such as Veljko Belivuk's DNA trace at the crime scene, magically disappeared. Kojić's task in the whole operation was to secure a car for the liquidation of Vlastimir Milošević, which he did through his godfather from Šabac, who "sang" as soon as the police came to him. And not only did the car salesman confess to the crime, he also identified Marko Miljković as one of the buyers of the vehicle in question to the police during identification.
That recognition of the witness was the only evidence, and the reason why Miljković also ended up in the indictment for murder on the rails. Most likely, this event marked the beginning of Kojić's demise. Namely, Miljković reproached him for two things: first, that he chose an "unreliable" man to buy the car, and secondly, that he managed to stay on the run all the time, and that for Marko Miljković meant that he had better "connections" in the police. The worm of suspicion appeared, and that was more than enough for Bellywook's gang to put someone on the kill list.
Also, we should not forget that Kojić could have become an inconvenient witness in the case of murder on the tracks, but also in many other crimes. At the end of January 2020, all traces of Kojić were lost. Like most of the other victims of the clan, he left his phones at home, took only a mobile phone with the "Sky" application with him, drove off in an unknown direction, as he told his family, "for a meeting" and never returned. Miljković, after that event, boasted that he had already killed two godfathers.
