Key Ally of Serb President Gunned Down

One of the most trusted members of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s inner circle and the head of his dreaded security apparatus was shot to death by a masked gunman early Friday, Radio Belgrade reported.

The murder of Radovan Stojicic in the Mama Mia restaurant in downtown Belgrade was the most high-profile assassination in Serbia in years.

Known universally by his nickname “Badza,” or “Brute,” Stojicic was responsible for sending heavily armed riot police to break up peaceful protests by anti-Milosevic demonstrators in December and January.

He was Milosevic’s point man in arming ethnic Serbs who waged war on Croatia and then Bosnia-Herzegovina during the first half of this decade, and he fought with a special paramilitary unit that laid waste to parts of eastern Croatia.

Stojicic, 46, was shot to death shortly after midnight as he ate with his teenage son in the crowded restaurant barely two blocks from the Interior Ministry, headquarters of all police forces. The gunman strode into the restaurant, pointed an automatic rifle at Stojicic and fired several times before fleeing. A bodyguard was also wounded, radio reports said.

Authorities did not mount a manhunt until hours later. Curious passersby visited the crime scene unimpeded by police. Later Friday, police flooded the capital, Belgrade, blocked off some areas and pulled people from trams in what they described as an exhaustive search.

Stojicic, whose official title was deputy interior minister but whose power far exceeded that label, was one of only two officials with intimate access to Milosevic. With secret police chief Jovica Stanisic, he held unique information on Milosevic’s role in fomenting war in the former Yugoslav federation and in arming suspected war criminals. In theory, Stojicic could have implicated the powerful Serbian president in war crimes.

Stojicic also fought with Serbs against Muslims in the U.N.-declared “safe haven” of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in 1993, two years before it was overrun by Serbs in an assault that led to the disappearance of thousands of Muslim men.

Police under Stojicic’s leadership are also reported to be heavily involved in lucrative mafia-style business dealings.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of broad-daylight or public murders of criminal figures and war profiteers who are prominent in the Belgrade business world. Still, Stojicic recently boasted that “Belgrade is the safest city in Europe.”

Serbian authorities reported having no suspects in the case.