It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to shed light on the crime that happened on September 11, 2000 in the Belgrade restaurant "Knez": two guests shot a third in the back, in front of many witnesses, and then one of those two shot the victim in the head. . The perpetrators fled before the police arrived, but reported themselves to the authorities a few days later. If one of those two had not been Andrija Drašković, a playboy and businessman involved in many stories about organized crime, the court proceedings would have been short and simple. This is how the marathon trial began, which only came to an end last week, with the verdict of the High Court in Belgrade, which sentenced Drašković to ten years, and his godfather and accomplice Aleksandar Golubović to nine years in prison. However, even this, the fourth first-instance verdict, is not legally binding, and only if the Court of Appeal confirms it, the long and sad court story, which portrays the Serbian judiciary in an unflattering light, will come to an end.
In the meantime, it is not a bad idea to recall the background of the event that took place ten years and eleven days before the verdict in "Knez": the victim, the late Zdravko Plećić Pleća, was a member of the Surčina clan, a group which, with the support of the State Security, tried to acquire a monopoly in the late nineties on drug trafficking in Serbia and beyond, and she perceived Drašković as competition. According to eyewitnesses, Plećić entered the bar visibly drunk, approached Drašković's table and, with insults, blamed Drašković and Golubović for the death of Zoran Šijan, a prominent Surčinac liquidated ten months earlier in Belgrade. After Plećić turned his back on them and headed for the exit, Drašković and Golubović drew their pistols and shot, and when Plećić fell, Drašković approached him and "verified him". Witnesses also say that Elena also approached the dying Plećić and stepped on his head with a heel, but she was not included in the indictment, although she received a suspended sentence after the police found an entire arsenal of weapons in her apartment, including a rocket launcher ("zolja"). . In the meantime, she married Jugoslav from the Karić tycoon family and took his last name.
The above-mentioned version of the murder in "Knez", confirmed by the findings of court experts, was accepted by the District Court in Belgrade and in June 2001 it sentenced Drašković to nine and a half years and Golubović to nine years in prison. The court did not believe Elena, who stated as a witness that the late Plećić pulled Drašković's hair and that he was the first to reach for the gun. After an appeal, the Supreme Court of Serbia increased the sentences to eleven and a half years for Drašković and eleven for Golubović. However, the Supreme Court of the then still existing FR Yugoslavia sent the case back for a retrial, where the tandem received seven years in prison each. This verdict, however, was overturned, and at the third first-instance trial, in 2004, witnesses appeared who categorically claimed that Plećić was brandishing a gun and experts who proved that the shot that hit him in the head at a right angle was fired from a distance while he was falling . At that trial, Elena claims that her ex-husband did not shoot at all, and Golubović accepts everything on himself. The court concludes that it was pure self-defense and acquits both of them, so that Drašković and Golubović, after serving three and a half years in prison in Sremska Mitrovica, are released. In the meantime, the Supreme Court overturns that verdict and begins the fourth first-instance trial in which the defendants defend themselves from freedom. Due to frequent delays caused by legal technicalities, that trial dragged on until September 21 of this year, ending with the above-mentioned sentence of ten years for Drašković and nine for Golubović.
In the most recent proceedings, the court took as mitigating circumstances the fact that Drašković is the father of two minor children, as well as that Plećić was drunk and aggressive, but assessed the defendants' reaction as "excessive" and qualified the act as premeditated murder. Drašković has been described by the Belgrade boulevard press in recent years as the "Serbian Escobar", a "beautiful, rich and dangerous heartbreaker", who "looks like a million dollars". At the sentencing, he appeared in a plain gray sweater and jeans, in the company of his parents and his new wife, Tamara Nikšić (whom he met during a free weekend while serving his sentence in Mitrovica), and the only thing that could be concluded that he was dangerous was the increased security of the courtroom and the Palace of Justice that day. After the presiding judge Zorana Trajković read the verdict and ordered Drašković to be detained immediately, Tamara burst into tears, and Golubović loudly complained about the injustice. Drašković, however, remained composed and said: "We knew that, what now? Well, it was clear, we could expect that", he allowed himself to be handcuffed after six years at liberty. The court released Golubović until the final verdict, despite his protests and loudly expressed desire to go to prison with his godfather.
Although it was speculated in the press that Drašković, who is currently in the Central Prison, will serve his sentence in the newly built special department of the prison in Zabela, the so-called "Alcatraz", where the most dangerous criminals are housed, we learn from sources in the Ministry of Justice that he will be sent to Mitrovica , where he already knows the room layout, house rules and staff. However, he will hardly be able to count on the preferential treatment he had during his previous stay (separate apartment with leather furniture, bar and espresso machine, unlimited visits) because the manager at the time was dismissed due to many malpractices.
If the Court of Appeal confirms the verdict, Drašković will have to spend another two and a half years in Mitrovica before he will be entitled to request release, of course if he behaves in an exemplary manner. The spokesman of the Higher Prosecutor's Office, Tomo Zorić, said that "the verdict, although not final, represents a great victory, not only for the prosecutor's office, but also for the reformed Serbian judiciary." After several recent scandalous verdicts (the cases of Brankica Stanković, Teofil Pančić, Studio B...) and the ten-year struggle in the Drašković case, it would be interesting to find out how the Prosecution defines defeat.
Andrija Drašković (1958) was born in Kosovska Mitrovica, but spent his childhood in Milan, where his father Milorad was a representative of Jugometal. As a teenager, Andrija comes to Belgrade, where he enrolls in the High School of Economics. Thanks to his large pocket money and a broad hand, already as a seventeen-year-old he gained a passage into the company of more serious criminals, who at that time gathered in the Duga and Nana clubs. During the eighties, Drašković bought the first club of his own (Zvezda), and later the casino in the Majestik Hotel.
During the 1990s, Drašković was often associated with the trafficking of smuggled cigarettes through Montenegro, and later with the wholesale distribution of cocaine, but none of this was proven, perhaps because, as is believed, he was under the protection of the secret police for a long time. He was also mentioned as one of the main organizers of the assassination of Željko Ražnatović Arkan, but the man who qualified him as such - former Loznica police chief Vojislav Jekić - was killed, and Drašković claimed at the trial for Arkan's murder, where he appeared as a witness, that was friends with the deceased, and that he even lent him a limousine for the wedding.
Drašković almost escaped violent death several times, and the most spectacular assassination attempt occurred in 2004, shortly after he was released from the Mitrovica prison. Then, fire was opened on the column of jeeps in which Drašković was near the Kvantaška market, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding several others. During a trip to Dubai in 2007, Drašković was arrested during a layover in Germany and extradited to Italy, which issued a warrant for him for cigarette smuggling. He was released after a few months, due to lack of evidence.
In recent years, Drašković has been hanging out intensively with Sreten Jocić aka Joca Amsterdam, with whom he has a similar biography. Jocić has been in the Central Prison since April last year, and Drašković has been at the same address since last week.
