The Babylon Brothers

The sources for this complicated chronology are investigators and, unofficially, the Cacak police which was unusually polite with reporters. That police force has a large collection of unresolved killings, explosions and attempted murders over the past few years and its high ranking officers were often accused of working with criminals.

"It doesn’t matter, they were thieves as well," Dejan Zivotic consoled his classmate and neighbor Darko Nikolic who just told him that he’d killed the wrong people in Cacak. That was in the summer of 1995. In mid-January this year, Zivotic was arrested in Belgrade. The owner of a bakery in New Belgrade who was never convicted or fined for anything was charged with killing Tomislav Mihajlovic in June 1996 and Branko Drobnjak in January 1997. He was paid 20,000 DEM for the first killing and 30,000 for the second.

Police and court officers in Cacak don’t like to talk about his arrest but sources in the local police said the hired assassin was discovered by accident. Allegedly, Zivotic was picked up by police because he was drugged. At some point he cried out: "don’t take me to Cacak", and things got rolling.

Zivotic carefully investigated his targets and tended to back away if there was anything he didn’t like. On June 5, he wanted to postpone the killing because there were too many of Mihajlovic’s employees around, but Mihajlovic saw him and walked towards him, shouting. Zivotic ran towards the railway tracks where he’d parked his car. When they crossed the tracks, Mihajlovic pulled out a gun and fired at Zivotic who dropped to the ground and returned fire, killing Mihajlovic.

Zivotic used a pistol licensed to himself. He gave that gun to Jeremija Pajovic to change the barrel so it couldn’t be traced to him. Pajovic is from Cacak but lives in Belgrade and is a close friend of Zoran Bojovic whose brother Goran ordered the killing of Mihajlovic from his home in the South African Republic. Zivotic was paid by Pajovic. He got 10,000 DEM before the killing and another 10,000 later. Pajovic was afraid the gunsmith he planned to take the pistol to would turn him in to the police so he kept the gun in his home for a time and returned it to Zivotic without changing the barrel. Now that gun is in the hands of the police.

Goran Bojovic also ordered the killing of Branko Drobnjak. Zivotic fired 20 rounds into Drobnjak from a silenced automatic pistol through Drobnjak’s car windscreen in the morning of January 23, 1997 in central Cacak. He fired the gun with plastic bags on his hands after he spent some time waiting for his backup man to radio that Drobnjak had driven into the street. After the killing he went back into the cellar where he had been waiting and left the gun there before calmly walking to a rented apartment nearby.

Zivotic and Nikolic met Goran Bojovic at the pool in Belgrade’s Hyatt hotel. Bojovic was at Belgrade university but the Cacak police said he was already involved with Belgrade criminals. Zivotic and Nikolic played water polo at the time. Zivotic said that was when he noticed the scars on Bojovic’s legs which he got in a fight between criminals.

Bojovic became known in the early 1990s as a man who does armed robberies. As soon as he got a name for himself he went into the most profitable business in Cacak - loan sharking. He used to lend large amounts of hard currency at a monthly interest rate of 20%-25%.

Bojovic soon joined forces with Mikica Velimirovic who was his childhood friend. Velimirovic was an inmate in many reform homes in Serbia and finally became someone when his older brother Milos returned to Cacak. Milos had a fairly large construction company in the Czech republic. That company is still there but Milos had to come back to Yugoslavia because he clashed with the Czech branches of the Albanian and Russian Mafia. In Cacak, he set up the Babylon Engineering company and built its company headquarters in the center of town. Cacak residents call it the Tower of Babylon. It is also home to a disco which he gave to his younger brother.

Things went fine for Bojovic and Velimirovic until Toma Mihajlovic returned from Germany for a rest after robbing several German jewelers. Mihajlovic brought back a lot of money and he went into the loan shark business but he charged only 15% a month. He even lent money so people could buy their debts from Bojovic, who just couldn’t put up with that. In 1994 he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for extortion, paid a 30,000 DEM bail bond but decided to leave the country anyway. He also decided to take care of Mihajlovic. On January 7, 1995, Mihajlovic found a bomb under his car which didn’t explode only because one of the detonator switches was in the wrong position. He took the bomb off his car and threw it into some bushes.

On January 8, Bojovic and his wife left first for Thailand and then went on to South Africa. From there he asked Darko Nikolic to clear things up in Cacak. Velimirovic was first on the list which isn’t strange because Velimirovic was on trial for the same extortion as Bojovic but was released. The two men also argued over money. Bojovic got Nikolic a Kalashnikov and Nikolic started preparing with Vladimir Ninic who was also arrested recently. They decided to ambush Velimirovic on the night of August 25, 1995 outside a disco. They knew he never let anyone borrow his Mercedes and when Nikolic saw two people in the car he emptied his magazine into them. That was the very night that Velimirovic lent his car to local criminals Miljan Andjelic and Milovan Vujovic. He wanted to trade the Mercedes for their car and let them try it out. Once he got back to Belgrade, Nikolic first went to see Zivotic who had no idea what his friend was involved in. When he saw newspaper reports about the killings in Cacak he put two and two together and asked his friend to come clean.

Then it was Mihajlovic’s turn. On November 27 that same year, Nikolic emptied his assault rifle magazine into a Cacak cafe where Mihajlovic was sitting and just to be sure threw in a hand grenade. Mihajlovic was seriously injured and a pensioner was killed. Zivotic knew all about this attempted killing and even went to Cacak with Nikolic several times.

Nikolic did his best to correct the mistake and collect the rest of the money. He went to Cacak several times over the next few months. His rental car was finally noticed by the local police. In the spring of 1996, the local traffic police stopped him, looked at his ID and told him that they know he comes to Cacak often.

Nikolic realized he was in trouble right away. As soon as he got back to Belgrade he took Vladimir Ninic’s passport, glued his own photo into it and fled to Hungary. His father came to Hungary to bring him his own passport and he went on to Capetown where Bojovic lives. Before he fled he gave the assault rifle to Zivotic and a kilo of plastique which Zivotic would plant on Mihajlovic’s car.

Bojovic and Nikolic called from Capetown and asked Zivotic to finish the job. "They knew I knew a lot," Zivotic told an investigating judge. He said he stalled and resisted at first but then they started threatening his family and he agreed.

Interestingly, Bojovic didn’t care about killing Velimirovic once Mihajlovic was dead. On the contrary, they went into business again, deciding to get rid of the Drobnjak brothers. Branko and Dragan Drobnjak were also their friends. The two brothers, who were brutal loan sharks, became independent and strong in Bojovic’ absence. Since the Drobnjak brothers and Bojovic were friends, they often lent money to the same people. In 1996, they started clashing over whose money should be repaid first. The clash culminated in November 1996 although Slava Markovic tried to kill Dragan Drobnjak and Branko’s driver Miodrag Djordjevic at Velimirovic’s orders earlier.

Cacak Lawyer Grozda Gagic defended Bojovic at the extortion trial in 1994. She promised him a suspended sentence and took a large amount of money, but Bojovic was sentenced to 15 months and he asked Gagic to give the money back. Branko Drobnjak also wanted some money back from the lawyer. In mid-1996, he shot a local criminal in front of the police in broad daylight. Gagic promised him he would be acquitted and took money from him but Drobnjak got four months in jail.

Gagic was forced to sell her house and decided to repay Bojovic first but informed Drobnjak when and where she would pay back the money. In November, Zoran Bojovic, Goran’s brother, and their cousin Aleksandar came to get the money from Gagic. In front of the house they met Dragan Drobnjak and two of his thugs. The shooting started and Drobnjak even threw two hand grenades. Alesandar Bojovic managed to shoot all three attackers. Drobnjak was arrested but in no time at all two bombs went off in front of the homes of the judge in whose court he was due to appear and the local prison warden. Drobnjak got six years for attempted kidnapping and murder. Gagic sold he house and moved out of Cacak. Goran Bojovic was angry that the Drobnjak brothers tried to kill his brother and ordered Branko Drobnjak killed.

Of the nine men known to have been involved in all this, five have been arrested and four are at large. Velimirovic and Voja Ivanovic, who was involved in the attempt to kill Drobnjak’s driver, are assumed to be in the country. Bojovic and Nikolic got into an argument just before the new year and shot at each other. Nikolic is in a prison hospital and will be extradited as soon as he recovers. Bojovic is under police surveillance and is also expected to be handed over to the Yugoslav police right after his South African citizenship is formally taken away. That won’t be hard because he lied on his citizenship application.