Spanish police arrest 3 Serbian ‘assassins’

MORE than €550,000 in cash and an arsenal of firearms were seized from a luxury property in Valencia.

Among the weapons seized are three Scorpion submachine guns commonly used by the Serbian mafia hit-men, Spanish National Police said.

This followed the arrest in Valencia City last Friday of a fugitive convicted for the assassination of the Serbian prime minister in 2003.

Vladimir Milisavljevic was arrested with two other alleged Serbian organized crime members. They were Serbian mafia kingpin of the ‘Zemun Clan’, Luka Bojovic, and suspected hit-man Sinisa Petric, aka ‘Baku’.

The ‘Zemun Clan’ developed from the Arkan’s Tigers, a Serbian paramilitary group known for their cruelty in the 1990s.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was killed by a sniper in front of government headquarters in Belgrade in March 2003.

As Milisavljevic escaped arrest at the time of the incident, in 2007, he was convicted with 11 others in Serbia and sentenced in absentia to 35-years for his involvement in the assassination and another 40-years for other crimes.

He had been on the run ever since the slaying. Milisavljevic had travelled from Las Palmas in Gran Canaria to meet with the other two. Bojovic, age 39, originally from Belgrade, is one of Interpol’s most wanted fugitives.

He has various convictions in his home country for murders, human trafficking, drugs and fire arms, as well as being involved in the sex trade.

He is wanted by Interpol in connection with more than 20 murders in Serbia, the Netherlands and Spain. Bojovic is also under investigation for various drug trafficking incidences in Switzerland, Romania, Holland, the US and Spain.

However, Bojovic is not wanted for Djindjic’s assassination, but three other unrelated killings, according to a spokeswoman for Serbia’s Court for Organized Crime.

This concludes a police investigation which started more than 20-months ago in collaboration with Serbian and Dutch authorities.