Murder at the Ritz

On Saturday, September 6, in front of the disco bar Ritz in Blagoja Parovica Street in Kosutnjak, Vukasin Gojak, alias Vule, proprietor of the disco Ritz and a major in Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan’s Voluntary Serbian Guard (SDG), was killed. While starting his Mitsubishi Pajero at about eleven o’clock in the evening, Gojak was killed with a single shot from a military gun with an optical sight. The bullet, caliber 7.9 mm, went through the rear left window and hit the victim in the lower part of the neck. "Brother, someone shot me," is supposedly the only thing Gojak was able to say before losing consciousness. He died on the operating table, twenty minutes after being driven to hospital.

In the woods, some thirty meters away from the place of the victim’s car, the police found a weapon — an M-48 rifle, popularly called "tandzara", which is equipped with an optical sight. Gojak had no chance of surviving the hit, because at that distance from that gun, even an average marksman without a field glass would have had a hard time missing the target, despite the darkness.

Even though he belonged to the closest circle of men around Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, it could not be said of the deceased that he was well known to the wider public. In January of 1992 he participated in the shooting which broke out between several "Serbian Supermen" in Raznatovic’s pastry shop, Ari. At that time one young member of SDG wounded two older colleagues, only to be seriously wounded himself. In the investigation that followed, Vukasin Gojak was mentioned by witnesses as "head of security" for the pastry shop. He had disarmed the mentioned youth and had dragged him outside to the mercy of his colleagues. The colleagues proceeded to shower the youth with bullets, so that he only accidentally survived. The youth by the name of Ljiljan Ostojic was later blamed for the entire incident, even though those who shot him should logically also be held responsible. As the Supreme Court overthrew Ostojic’s initial decision, the still investigation continues.

Several months later, an incident occurred once again in a building where Gojak was chief of security, but this time it was the casino on the sixth floor of Beogradjanka. In that casino, which according to press reports was owned by Raznatovic, a fight broke out between security and Isa Ler, alias Dzamba, Racnatovic’s adversary in the underworld and one of the Dorcol Clan veterans. Supposedly, Dzamba had come drunk, asking for Raznatovic in order to settle accounts with him, and Gojak and his men, according to their statements, had cordially but firmly removed him from the casino and escorted him to his car. However, the problem is that Dzamba was never seen alive after that, and his car was found somewhere in New Belgrade. According to rumors which have been circulating around town for five years now, Laro is lying somewhere near Erdut.

Gojak was the third man to fall victim to a sniper. A little more than a year ago, Sasa Lebovic was killed in the same way on a beach near Milocer, and the weapon, just as in Gojak’s case, was found leaning against a tree in the neighboring wood, with the only difference that the weapon was a newer model. The second sniping also occurred on the Montenegrin coast, on August 5 of this year. That time Minja Becir, a powerful player in cigarette smuggling, was killed in Budva. According to some sources, Gojak also participated in the cigarette business, even though he was registered as proprietor of several Belgrade casinos.

The "Montenegrin handwriting" is still not sufficient evidence for this latest murder to be tied in with certainty with the conflict between the Serbian and Montenegrin mafia, which has been simmering for some time now. However, if it points to the fact that members of the underworld have begun to liquidate each other by sniping, instead of the more usual automatic fire and explosives, than peaceful citizens will be relieved in the future, because snipers considerably decrease the possibility of innocent victims.

Neither Raznatovic, nor the United Serbian Party, nor the detective service Delije, in which the deceased worked, issued any statements after Gojko’s murder, not even through the customary newspaper notice. Thus the story that Raznatovic and SDG do not issue statements when one of their close colleagues dies in circumstances that point to the settling of mafia accounts seems to be true.