'Trial of the century'
2003-12-22 08:38
Belgrade - The long-awaited trial of 15 suspects charged with the assassination of Serbia's reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic will begin on Monday with the suspected mastermind still at large and speculation rife about the official version of the killing.
Zvezdan Jovanovic, a former special police unit officer, was charged by special prosecutor Jovan Prijic with having killed Djindjic on March 12 outside the Serbian government building.
But an alleged mastermind of the murder plot, former police special unit commander Milorad Lukovic, better known as Legija, is still at large and will be tried in absentia.
Fourteen men have been charged with being accomplices to Jovanovic in the murder of Djindjic, one of the key figures in the ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
The process, already branded "the trial of the century" for the Serbian judiciary, will be held amid tight security in a newly established special court dealing with organised crime.
It is expected that the first day of the trial, chaired by the judge Marko Kljajevic, will be dedicated to the reading of more than 40 pages of the indictment against Lukovic, Jovanovic and others.
Despite a police conclusion that Jovanovic, acting as a lone sniper, had carried out the assassination, several media reports and Milan Veruovic, Djindjic's former bodyguard, disputed the findings of the official enquiry.
Veruovic, who was seriously wounded in the shooting, has said two snipers opened fire from opposite positions on streets parallel to the government headquarters.
And the weekly Nin reported that forensic evidence gathered at the scene of the murder also suggested that there had been "at least another gunman."
Justice officials refused to speculate about how long the trial would last, but legal experts estimated it could well spread to at least a full year.
Although the trial could pin down the murderer, the question of whether any political figure or loyalists of Milosevic's regime were behind the crime could hardly be solved, analysts warned.
The trial will begin only five days ahead of early parliamentary elections held to deal with a political crisis that came to a head after Djindjic's assassination and which dealt a fatal blow to the reformist government which has led the country since Milosevic's fall three years ago.