Young Pensioners

A Major General of the Serbian police force and Slobodan Milosevic's personal bodyguard, Senta Milenkovic, has been forced into early retirement for embezzlement related to last December's affair at the Belgrade airport when five of its employees were sacked. No, he was forced to retire, but the real reason is that he transferred a considerable amount of foreign currency to Cyprus. No way, his retirement has something to do with Milosevic's recent trip to China. Guess again, he had to go because he screwed up when the president's son got into a gunfight and is now treated somewhere abroad. Sorry, he got dumped because he grabbed a busload of money intended for police troops deployed in Belgrade last winter to fight protestors in the capital. In fact, general Milenkovic hasn't retired, he is on sick leave. Of course he hasn't retired, he was on television the other day when Belarus president Lukashenko was waving his hosts goodbye. He has retired due to illness. No, he was sacked because of slackness during Milosevic's stay in Karadjordjevo: the chlorine level in the swimming pool was higher then it should have been, which made the president unwell for a day or two. That is all rubbish, he was on the retirement list after the death of police chief Radovan Stojicic Badza, in whose clan Senta Milenkovic figured as one of the main men.

This is a short list of what readers in Serbia came across in the newspapers in the last week or so as reasons for Senta Milenkovic's alleged retirement. The interior ministry has neither denied nor confirmed rumours that Milosevic's bodyguard has retired, which left VREME's crew without an answer to a simple question: has the man retired or not? When there is no official information, imagination usually goes wild.

It is most interesting that apart from Milenkovic, three other generals have also been mentioned by Belgrade newspapers in the past week and a half or so: Milorad Vlahovic, Stanisa Trujic and Petar Zekovic. Vlahovic has allegedly quit the force, Trujic has retired, while Zekovic has been demoted and given a quite humiliating job. Embezzlement and close ties with the late Radovan Stojicic Badza, who was assassinated by an unknown gunman last April, are most frequently mentioned as the reasons for these sudden changes.

Rumours about reshuffling and retirements in the police force started last December, when a number of daily newspapers broke news that five officers working at the Belgrade airport were sacked for what is officially known as "abuse of power and illegal profiteering". A few days later, the pro-regime Belgrade daily Politika said on its 20th page that the new chief of security at the Belgrade airport was Milorad Pejovic, previously a commander of the airport's anti-terrorist unit. At the same time, rumours had it that generals Vlahovic and Trujic had been arrested for embezzlement involving cash and flats, but they turned out to be false although a former secret service agent and now a private investigator, Boza Spasic, confirmed them at one point. Milorad Vlahovic was indeed out of business for a while, but for different and quite understandable reasons: he broke his arm and took sick leave. All three names are now being mentioned again, Milenkovic being the icing on the cake: it is well known that Milenkovic, Vlahovic and the late Stojicic were close and that they all trained judo.

As far as the reshuffling of police cadres goes, the last official big story dates back to June, two months after the assassination of Stojicic. The interior ministry then issued an official statement to the effect that the chief of Belgrade police Petar Zekovic and the head of the task force, Milorad Vlahovic, were reassigned to new posts in the interior ministry. Zekovic was replaced by Branko Djuric, while Vlahovic's substitute was Milenko Ercic. Apart from surging to power with lower ranks than their predecessors, the new chiefs of police have two more things in common: they both have a good reputation and fathers who were policemen themselves. The most spectacular change from the media's point of view was the comeback of former Belgrade police chief Rade Markovic, who was sent to oblivion working in the ministry's analytic department during "Badza's reign". He is now the assistant minister for criminal affairs.

It is therefore not strange that the reshuffling of police cadres was followed by stories on the early and collective retirement of cadres loyal to the late Radovan Stojicic Badza. It should not be forgotten that back in 1994, when Stojicic was alive and well and firmly in power, inspector Dragan Markovic came forward with heavy accusations against "Badza's clan": involvement in car theft, large scale contraband and other criminal acts. In countries with a slightly better judicial system and defined laws, a person making such accusations would either bring down an entire team of ministers or go to jail for slander. Neither happened in Serbia, which made room for a lot of hear- say based "expert opinions" reaching a peak these days. Rumours, on the other hand, can be useful: they at least prompt an individual or two to think whether police work is supervised at all and ask for the most basic information on the service they pay to protect them.

The Boy With Bleached Hair

Democratic Party president Zoran Djindjic organized breakfast for the press in Belgrade's Verdi restaurant on February 3rd, to mark the eighth anniversary of his party. At this ceremony, he said he was able to confirm "beyond any doubt" that "a certain boy with bleached hair got hurt after some love-and-emotion problems and is now being treated somewhere abroad". He left up to the media's imagination who the "boy with bleached hair" is.