Djindjic Assassinated by His Own Party

Djindjic “killed by his own people”
B92 - May 18, 2004

BELGRADE -- Tuesday – Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia last night called a snap press conference to accuse officials from the former government of involvement in the assassination of prime minister Zoran Djindjic.

Journalists were forbidden to ask questions as the campaign manager for the governing coalition’s presidential candidate made the sensational allegations.

The allegations, read from a lengthy prepared statement by campaign manager Dejan Mihajlov, appeared at odds with a repeated pledge by presidential candidate Dragan Marsicanin to conduct a clean election campaign.

“They were silent when they killed the prime minister. They knew who made the decision that Djindjic should be killed and they knew who killed him,” said Mihajlov, referring to both government officials and senior figures in Djindjic’s Democratic Party.

“Protecting the Mafia”

The attack centred around a recent statement by Djindjic’s mother..

“My son was killed by his own people and a former minister told me that clearly,” Mihajlov quoted Mila Djindjic as saying.

“What is still unclear in these words of a mother? What is not clear when the wife of the murdered prime minister now receives in her house almost none of Djindjic’s closest associates, the people who sold him out and perhaps did something even worse,” he added.

Marsicanin’s campaign manager called on Democratic Party officials Boris Tadic and Zoran Zivkovic to say who killed their party leader and the prime minister of Serbia “if they really think they are distanced from the murderer”.

“If they won’t, we will. They won’t stop us with accusations, ceremonies, threats, cheap demagogy or the shameful abuse of the Djindjic family’s suffering.

“The roar they are raising is not to protect the Djindjic family but to protect their own Mafia family,” said Mihajlov, adding that if the party had wanted to defend Djindjic they should have done it more than a year ago.

“Let Zivkovic and Tadic think hard about with whom and in whose interests they were running the previous government and their own party,” he said.

Kostunica party concealing evidence?

Because Mihajlov refused to take questions, there was no clarification of exactly which former government officials he was accusing. Nor is it clear whether Marsicanin’s campaign office knows who killed the prime minister and on what basis they believe that former government officials were privy to the plot.

The executive director of the Committee of Human Rights Lawyers, Milan Simic, told B92 that Mihajlov’s speech would prove a hindrance to the investigation of the assassination.

If Marsicanin’s campaign office really has the kind of information indicated by Mihajlov this morning, he said, they are obliged to immediately pass it to the authorities. Otherwise Mihajlov would be guilty of the crime of failing to name those responsible for the murder.

Simic also raised the question of how Marsicanin and people from Kostunica’s party would justify exploiting the trial and the murder of the prime minister for their campaign.

“It’s very curious, particularly given the intertwined circumstance, the surrender of Legija and the fact that he will give his first evidence in court before the election and at the very beginning of the preceding media blackout,” he said.

Shameful politics

Former prime minister Zoran Zivkovic dismissed Mihajlov’s announcement as “an election pamphlet”.

“It couldn’t have been easy to write such a long and sick piece, a piece which reveals the sick minds of the people who wrote it, but I’m neither a psychiatrist nor a physician, so I can’t comment in detail on all the information in that piece,” he said.

Democratic Party leader Boris Tadic told B92 that the statement was the most shameful example of politics without principles.

If the statement is party of the Democratic Party of Serbia’s presidential campaign and if all the parties and party leader of the coalition government stand behind it, “then this county has a terrifying problem,” said Tadic.

“This is the height of political shame,” he added.

Other party leaders from the governing coalition were quick to distance themselves from the statement.

Senior G17 Plus official Goran Paunovic told B92 that the party was not involved, but did not want to comment further until the issue had been discussed by the coalition partners.

Serbian Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic flatly denied the statement had come from the coalition, saying that his party had not taken part in writing it.