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Pension as a smoke screen for terrorism?

On the eve of parliamentary elections in Montenegro, a group of 20 Serbian nationals was arrested on suspicion that they were planning to attack Montenegrin institutions and arrest Prime Minister Milo Đukanović.

Former commander of Serbian Gendarmerie Bratislav Dikić was marked as a leader of the group.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia Ivica Dačić said that the only thing he knows about Bratislav Dikić is that he is a senior and ill, which does not seem believable, nor do other statements of Serbian officials in this case.

The issue of whether Dikić acted on his own or he sometimes works for the state even as a senior is an important one for Serbia: commander in pension was arrested in another state, and also, Milorad Ulemek Legija was in pension as well when he commanded the murder of Serbian Prime Minister in 2003, Pobjeda writes.

Waiting for the courts

The influence security and paramilitary services have on regional relations was discussed for Pobjeda by Zoran Dragišić PhD from Belgrade’s Faculty for Security and journalist Vojislav Tufegdžić who deals with safety issues.

“It is difficult to estimate the extent of the influence security services have on regional relations”, Dragišić said, adding that we need to wait for an epilogue in court for the events that happened in Montenegro.

“I would rather call these groups organized crime than paramilitary services, because in order to call them the former they would have to have connections with someone in the leadership. At this moment, there is no such connections or they cannot be proven. These people are criminals who had or used to have police badges and membership in certain safety services. You can find this in any state in the region and it is a characteristic of weak and undeveloped state: to form parallel centers of power and have some paramilitary soldiers and policemen claim the right to defend national interests. This does not have much basis in reality, behind it is pure criminal and fights for illegal profits”, Dragišić said, adding that the majority of these people are involved in crime acts such as human trafficking, narcotics. He says these are the things that follow regional states since the wars begun, and that these issues must be seen in the context of organized crime that represents a serious threat in the region.

Tufegdžić said that former members of safety services “‘do not have power and influence to achieve anything”, meaning that such people “can be in function, but it cannot happen that they decide and act on their own”.

He believes that such individuals influence the region “as much as they are allowed to, which means that they are familiar with the system, but cannot make decisions in the system”.

Team or solo players

Do people who have worked in safety services stop their activities when they go into pension and what happens if they continue to work solo?

Dragišić explains that most of these people are honest people who go into pension young and many of them continue working legally, without disrupting the safety situations in their states.

“99% of former members of safety services contribute to the state and society’s safety”, Dragišić underlined, adding that there is “a small number of people who start being criminals”, but there is also “people who are still in service who engage in criminal activities”.

He reminded that Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić said several times that a serious fight would be waged against such occurrences, and that Minister of Interior Affairs Nebojša Stefanović also announced this fight.

“Interior investigations in police and safety services revealed and punished such activities. Former policemen, soldiers and members of safety services are dangerous criminals: they have expert knowledge, certain skills. If those skills are abused, they are more dangerous than regular criminals who do not have their experience”, Dragišić said, concluding that such people are the most dangerous for the state and that as a rule, they perform the heaviest crime acts.

“Unfortunately, we had in Serbia a murdered Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in 2003. The murderer was one of those who denied the state and did organized crime. We have this experience and these people are a dangerous threat”, Dragišić said.

Tufegdžić said that it is hard to predict what former safety service members are doing after pension. There is also mystification around their future employment that is partly unreasonable.

“People from big services of Eastern Europe went to private security agencies after the Berlin Wall fell, and they were functional. Still, they have limited reach, because there are new people that are power hungry, and many things that happen in this world are connected with this divide”, Tufegdžić said, adding that these people “are not so powerful, but they have the ability to transfer their power to younger generations. Or they stay the same as they were, but the times and context change”.

The reach of the leadership

There are two possibilities in the police: secret and public police, and there are two modes of functioning. One is to allow the police to do its job, which most do, and the other is to force secret and public police to do jobs that are not in their jurisdiction. Tufegdžić said that this divide is often visible in practice.

“Institutions force them to do what they should not be doing, and the issues that are visible and a serious threat to stability are ignored. This mechanism exists for decades, and whoever comes in power perpetuates it and improves it according to their personal needs. They are in function, but the other decide what is their function”, Tufegdžić said.

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