Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro

Milosevic had ordered Lukovic to have his forces fire on the pro-democracy demonstrators who were swarming Belgrade's streets and squares. Djindjic persuaded the Red Beret leader not to do so, convincing him that Milosevic was finished and that he could get a better deal under a new government. "The hidden power structures in Serbia understood that they could not go any further with Milosevic, so they gave him up, but they wanted certain payoffs," said Bratislav Grubacic, a Belgrade-based political analyst.

At first, Djindjic and Serbia's new leaders accommodated them. Lukovic's cohorts were integrated into the country's police and security forces, a wholesale purge of the judiciary, military and law-enforcement bodies was deferred, and the authorities turned a blind eye while organized crime groups like the Zemun Clan continued doing what they do best. But the new government soon realized that Serbia would stay an international pariah, elected officials would not really govern the country and the economy would remain a basket case as long as Lukovic and other underworld leaders kept their influence. So Djindjic and his team decided to declare war, at first covertly but later openly, on organized crime.

Djindjic's government first tried to play Belgrade's top two organized crime syndicates, the Zemun and Surcin clans, against each other. The government also began hitting various underworld targets with raids against drug rings and human traffickers, as well as rooting out some remnants of the old regime from law-enforcement bodies. Cooperating with the international criminal tribunal in The Hague reinforced this effort, since many suspected war criminals are also underworld bosses. But it also carried enormous political risks, since many here view the tribunal as anti-Serb.

Under pressure from the United States, Milosevic was arrested in April 2001 and extradited to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes two months later. Assuming he and his men were safe, Lukovic acquiesced in the move. But the tribunal soon turned its attention to Lukovic and other Red Berets. Seeing an opportunity to please Western donors and rid himself of his political rivals, Djindjic made it clear he would cooperate.

In January Lukovic sent an open letter to Serbian newspapers accusing Djindjic of being "dangerously unpatriotic" and warning him that his days were numbered. "You are muddying the true patriots [and] spending the last credits of people's patience," the letter read. "Your last days are being counted." In February, a reputed Zemun Clan gangster named Dejan Milenkovic--alias "Bugsy"--rammed a truck into the prime minister's car, which was traveling in a government motorcade. A sniper was waiting in a nearby highrise apartment building for Djindjic to get out of his car, but the prime minister's bodyguards made sure he stayed put. Bugsy was briefly detained after the incident, but, amazingly, was released and has since disappeared.

The first attempt on Djindjic's life came two days after a failed attempt to arrest Veselin Sljivancanin, indicted by the Hague tribunal for atrocities committed in Croatia, particularly the massacre of civilians at Vukovar, in the early 1990s. "The Djindjic assassination shows how little progress Serbia has made in dismantling the Milosevic-era structures of power and breaking with the past," said Lyon of the International Crisis Group. "It also shows the dangers faced by reformers who attempt to dismantle these structures."

On March 12, the day Djindjic was killed, his government was planning to issue arrest warrants for several top underworld figures, including Lukovic. Many here described the assassination as nothing short of an attempted coup by remnants of the old regime, and warn that a similar fate could just as easily await Iraq's new rulers in due time. "The hidden power structures that will eventually give up Saddam will continue to have money and power, and will later form the opposition to the new regime," Grubacic said. "It won't be easy with them."

Officials have become fond of referring to Djindjic as "Serbia's John F. Kennedy," and on the night of his funeral, a Belgrade television station showed Oliver Stone's controversial film JFK. The message and the symbolism from the film--that the Djindjic assassination was orchestrated by a cabal of crime bosses and state security officials--were lost on nobody.

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