Burst on Dadilja

The liquidation was evidently planned because Popovic usually came daily around 3 p.m. to see whether the builders were applying themselves diligently to the renovation of the premises in the building (next to Palace Hotel) where he and his partner were to open a casino for which, his friends say, he acquuired the licence in no time at all.

The method is established and efficient: the victim heads for the car, halts and becomes a fixed target which is an ideal moment for wanton shots in the head. This type of murder seems to have become common in these parts and among the uninitiated rates as highly professional which is nonsense if one knows how these things are done in the rest of the world. It is certain only that this manner of killing originated in the war in Croatia and Bosnia and has to do with the practice of ethnic cleansing.

THE TRAIL OF THE PAST: Dragan Popovic Dadilja, a taxi driver until 1985, was that same year sentenced, together with his inseparable mate Dragan Vujasinovic Vuja, to 15 years of imprisonment for the murder of Ranko Rubezic (the other two accomplices, Boris Petkov and Bojan Petrovic, received 8 years each). The Supreme Court commuted their sentences to 12 years, and they were released after eight and a half years. Rubezic was one of the first leaders of the Belgrade gang whom the then regime (State Security Service) used as a hired gun against political opponents of the Socialist Yugoslavia abroad. It is thought that the murder of Ranko Rubezic marked the beginning of organized (criminals, police, SSS) liquidations of collaborators of our secret services, who had become a nuisance and a threat. It is certain that, for instance, Rubezic and his group which included a top-ranking counterfeiter and self-appointed painter who had trouble making an artistic name in Belgrade (the police records say: SSS collaborator), executed the order to kill Stjepan Djurekovic, former INA manager, hiding in Germany. However, when Rubezic, unhinged by drugs, started threatening and blackmailing some prominent personalities (Jova Popovic, police inspector in Bizic), Vuja, Dadilja, Bojan and Boris killed him having been promised that they would not be prosecuted. There was no end to their astonishment when in the name of the people they were pronounced guilty and sentenced by the Belgrade District Court. To put it simply, they had been led by the nose. Nevertheless, after leaving the prison, Dadilja and Vuja were given the opportunity to get rich very quickly. Both dealt in oil, drove black Mercedes and BMWs and served as bodyguards to children of our top politicians.

WEAPONS: On the same day when Dragan Popovic was shot from a Heckler and Koch gun, the same brand of weapon was used in a shoot-out in Damba, a pub in Zvezdara. Whence so many of these costly weapons, once imported only for the elite members of the Federal and Republican police? During the conflict in Croatia these weapons were given only to the ascertained patriots ready to defend the Serbhood as paramilitary formations, although it was common knowledge that they were ascertained as notorious criminals. For example, the Serb Volunteer Guard lost almost all of its top brass when they ended up in prison for crimes and banditry committed after the return from the front. Many of them kept their weapons and got licences for Heckler and Koch guns even though the law explicitly prohibits it. It came out, for instance, during the trial of Vasa Pavicevic in the Belgrade District Court. The charge was murder and the courtroom was full of criminals who came to follow the trial and were obliged to surrender their weapons at the entrance. The weapons included several of the above mentioned brand. They all had proper licences for them issued by the Secretariat of the Interior. Even the most credulous no longer believe the ramblings that they were not licensed. Dragan Popovic Dadilja did not heed to his friends' advice and, as most of them, retreated into deep clandestinity. He believed that with the support of his protectors who evidently turned their backs on him, he should be able to manage our biggest criminal whose appetite is only honed by the already tremendous booty brought from the front. Dadilja came out into the open and was swept off. To talk about possible discovery of the murderer and intensive investigation would be quite ridiculous.