The hearing of cooperative witness Aleksandar Sindjelic has been postponed because one of the suspects for attempted coup on 16 October, Democratic Front (DF) representative Milan Knezevic, has not been familiar with the case files. Sindjelic was supposed to face off Knezevic and another suspect DF leader Andrija Mandic in the Special Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday morning.
Sindjelic is to be heard on 20 March.
Russian ties
According to information obtained by Pobjeda newspaper, he is to reveal the details of his meeting with Eduard Shishmakov in Moscow. Then Sindjelic got a plane ticket from this GRU agent to go there to make a deal on actions on the eve of parliamentary elections in Montenegro.
As Sindjelic already told prosecutors, Shishmakov gave him €200,000 then to pay for the arrival of as many as possible people to Podgorica and to buy weapons and equipment for terrorist groups. Shishmakov later came to Serbia using legal Russian passport under the name of Eduard Shirokov.
According to the prosecutor’s office documents, at the meetings in Belgrade and Moscow, Sindjelic agreed the criminal group’s activities with Eduard Shirokov (Shishmakov) and Vladimir Popov.
Attack plans
As determined by an investigation, they had two plans. Sindjelic was supposed to organise the arrival of as many people as possible to the DF rally.
To do that, he invited retired general Bratislav Dikic, former commander of the Serbian gendarmerie, and asked him to go to Montenegro in order to hold protesters together, “organise their movement, command in conflict against the police in order to break into Parliament along with politicians”.
The group’s B plan included locating, arresting or attempting to assassinate former Montenegrin prime minister Milo Djukanovic.
Serbian citizen Aleksandar Sindjelic was granted cooperative witness status in November last year. He is obliged to check in with the court regularly.
He said that Russian agents Shishmakov and Popov were behind the plot. He also added that the two of them were in Belgrade and returned to Russia when learnt about the arrests in Podgorica.
Cooperation
Sindjelic, a former member of the volunteer military units in Ukraine, decided to cooperate with investigators after he was presented with irrefutable evidence of his involvement in the case, including wiretapped conversations with the two Russian intelligence agents about the details of the attack.
Thus on 1 November 2016, Aleksandar Sasa Sindjelic, came voluntarily to Podgorica and testified Shishmakov and Popov had paid him to “take care” of seizing Parliament on 16 October and killing PM Milo Djukanovic. Initially, after the arrest of Serbian citizens, he claimed to have nothing to do with the operation and that he was engaged in “designing and printing T-shirts in Belgrade”.
According to the findings of the investigation, Shirokov and Popov organised a criminal group in the territory of Montenegro, Serbia and Russia to carry out an “undetermined number of criminal acts of terrorism and the murder of highest ranking representatives of Montenegro.”
For the time being, 25 persons have been under Special Prosecutor’s Office’s investigation on suspicion of committing the criminal offense of creating a criminal organisation and attempted terrorist attack.
Montenegrin authorities issued a warrant against Ananije Nino Nikic, a DF’s translator, on suspicion that he was part of the logistics network for the group who planned to permanently destabilise Montenegro after the closure of polling stations.
