A police officer in the sights of the state

The path that Milenkovic will take to the Prosecutor's Office has been prepared for a long time, two and a half years to be precise. It's as if on November 13, 2019, when everything started, destiny arranged everything to commence as it should, but some forces are trying to finish it as if the discovery of Jovanjica never happened. The inspectors of the Department for the Fight Against Illegal Drugs of the Belgrade Police were an hour and a half late for their official trip. They could not leave

without a signed travel warrant, and the wait for the signature of the then chief of the city's criminal police department was prolonged. When the inspectors finally left, their peaceful car ride was interrupted by a black Audi with the markings of a Serbian Orthodox church, equipped with police blinkers, and the passengers of that vehicle showed them the middle finger. Two cars carrying the inspectors managed to stop the speeding Audi. It was at that very moment, on that part of the highway, police chief Slobodan Milenkovic and the owner of the Jovanjica estate, Predrag Koluvija, stood eye to eye, facing each other. Koluvija was with his driver, Milos Tofilovic, previously known in the circles of heroin dealers. While the police blinkers were flashing red and blue light, the inspectors noticed the Serbian coat of arms, with four letters S, on the trunk of the Audi. A man with a beard approached them with a smile and, as stated in the indictment, introduced himself as working in the cabinet of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia. On the police ID, above the coat of arms, there was indeed his photo, also with a beard. What Koluvija did not know is that out of almost 40 thousand members of the Ministry of Interior, only a few, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand, were allowed to wear a beard. Furthermore, these beardos must justify on regular basis with medical findings confirming they have skin diseases, why they can't shave for a photo shoot. That was enough to raise suspicion among the four inspectors. Never mind the fact that Milenkovic himself later told the prosecutor that he already knew about Koluvija as a seller of narcotic drugs, and that he doubted the authenticity of his ID right away. The chief of operations of the Department for the Fight Against Illegal Drugs had the same doubt. Namely, Dusan Mitic told the prosecutor that for a year he had operational knowledge that Koluvija was producing illegal drugs on the territory of Stara Pazova. A police raid followed. During the raid on the Jovanjica property, as stated in the indictment, 1.6 tons of marijuana, ten underground, state-of-the-art, skunk production laboratories, dryers, and cannabis plantations were discovered in the greenhouses. It was, according to investigators, an unprecedented discovery of the largest skunk factory in Europe. Instead of bombastic headlines in the newspapers, rather than a press conference and an award for the police officers, silence followed. The silence was so loud, it echoed ominously.

When parts of the Sky application for secret communication used by the organized criminal group, which, as the prosecution alleges, Koluvija was leading, were published, it became clearer who was causing that silence. Namely, while Koluvija was in the hands of the police, his associates from the police and BIA met on the "Security Council" group the last time, in the chat application. It can be seen from the exchanged messages that the journalists also worried them.

"The media is now the most important, so that (the news of the arrest) do not leak." Military intelligence and BIA can stop the media," wrote Radovan Bojovic, a later arrested police officer from the Department Against Economic Crime.

Indeed, the news about Koluvija's arrest did not leak for almost two weeks, until the opposition politician, Miroslav Aleksic, then MP, asked the police in the Parliament why they were hiding it. Aleksic also said that he had information that during the arrest of Koluvija, the latter called the President’s brother, Andrej Vucic. It was then that the avalanche started. Journalists started asking questions, the opposition parties presented their findings and called out the government. The police minister admitted under pressure that the raid did take place. Far from the eyes of the public, in the corridors of the city police building, a real thriller unfolded. BIA agents nosed about for days in the famous “29. November Precinct” talking to the police officers. However, they were not interested, for example, in how and on whose orders, their colleagues had been making illegal drugs with Koluvija. Instead, they asked: "Who informed the opposition about Jovanjica? Which one of you is talking to the press? Is Slobodan Milenkovic, God forbid, working for the American DEA? What does that Mitic guy know about Koluvija? How did the cops discover the skunk factory?” In other words, BIA was more interested in why the police were doing their job in the first place.

There were rumors around town that, instead of receiving a silver or gold medal, Milenkovic could very well be “iced” because of Jovanjica. Working in the illegal drugs department is the riskiest job. Let us recall that one of the most famous police officers in the world, Serpico, who raised his voice against the criminals in the police’s ranks, escaped alive by sheer luck, just as he was working in "Narcotics". A drug dealer shot him in the face. He survived and told the public everything about corruption in the police.

Soon after Milenkovic uncovered Jovanjica, he almost suffered a similar fate. On new year’s eve 2020, in the evening, in the Belgrade municipality of Vracar, a large quantity of narcotics was to be handed over. As the media speculated, the handover was arranged with a dangerous drug dealer by a police informant. However, the criminals somehow found out about it. Not only did someone provide them with confidential information about the informant, but they also received a tip that in addition to the informant, Chief Milenkovic could also be on the undercover mission. The opposite side opened fire as soon as the dealer appeared in their sight, whom they received a tip for that he was more loyal to the police than to criminals. Kursulina Street was riddled with bullets, at least six were shot at the informant. Commotion and a chase ensued. The ambulance with the wounded man was still rushing towards the hospital when, coincidentally or not, the pro-government media reported the scoop: "A policeman wounded in a shootout". On the same evening, the Ministry of Interior denied the reports. However, there was a doubt and a question in the air; what would have happened if police officer Milenkovic had really been present at the handover? Irrespective of who actually tipped off the journalists, luckily, the tip turned out to be fake news. An investigation by internal affairs followed, the inspectors were interrogated several times. They passed all checks, without disciplinary punishment. However, that was

not enough for the tabloids, which continued to label them as "crooked cops", "those who discovered Jovanjica in a suspicious way".

Finally, in 2020, a mechanism was launched whose gears are made up of political, security and judicial structures, lubricated by pro-regime media. Chief Milenkovic and chief of operations Mitic, in January of that year, were polygraph tested, and the main topic was Jovanjica. They were also asked if they had told the opposition parties that Koluvija telephoned Andrej Vucic; the polygraph showed that they had not. After a few months, also because of Jovanjica, Milenkovic and Mitic were retested and passed the polygraph once again. Both times their lie detector test was supervised by the brother of Vucic's chief of staff, Police Major Dejan Kojic. When the journalists found out that the police officers were being taken for a polygraph because of Jovanjica, MoI respondent with a statement by Milenkovic saying that Koluvija did not call Andrej Vucic during the arrest and that the police did not find evidence that the Vucic family was connected with Jovanjica. Simply put, Jovanjica was not a “family business”, but was it a state business, given that in July 2020 members of BIA and MoI were arrested as Koluvija's "security detail", while a VOA officer remains on the run all this time. The involvement of the state security top brass in Jovanjica is also shown by a recent discovery by a BIRN journalist. Namely, at the beginning of the week, BIRN announced that in the summer of 2019, Koluvija organized a meeting between Brigadier General Zoran Stojkovic, Director of the Military Intelligence Agency VOA, and "Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister of Macedonia, Raskovski", as stated in the document from the investigation of the "Jovanjica 2" case the journalists had seen. It was actually the then Secretary General of the Macedonian Government, Dragi Raskovski, and according to the document, the meeting was organized in the restaurant "Mrak" in Nis, and in addition to Raskovski and Stojkovic, Predrag Koluvija was also

present. In the document that BIRN had access to, it is also stated that the contacts between Koluvija and the head of VOA were intense. VOA remains silent about the meeting in Mrak, they neither deny nor confirm. There is no reaction from the Prosecutor's Office, the pro-regime media hasn’t reported about it and god forbid anyone suggested to polygraph the Director of VOA.

The fact that police officers Milenkovic and Mitic passed the polygraph twice was not enough. First the tabloids labeled on their cover pages officer Dusan Mitic as the guilty person for Jovanjica and alleged the opposition was attempted to smear the honor of the Vucic family. There was a rumor circulating that Chief Milenkovic just needed to throw Inspector Mitic under the boss, as police chiefs typically do, and the Serbian civilian and military intelligence would be satisfied. Since Milenkovic did not sacrifice him, Mitic joined his superior to be burned at the stake by the media and here and there, the latter would also call out the Prosecutor for Organized Crime Sasa Drecun, who filed two indictments for Jovanjica. The verdict that found opposition politician Aleksic guilty of smearing the honor of Andrej Vucic did not help either, because he said that Koluvija called him. Attacks on police officers came in waves. One of the strongest ones was when Koluvija was released from custody in October 2021. At the time, President Vucic came personally to Koluvia's defense.

“That man spent two years in custody, there is no similar case where a man remained in custody for such a crime for two years. Some have asked why he did not remain in custody. Very strange, you will agree, because he didn't kill anyone, he didn't have 10 tons of cocaine in his possession or something like that, but, as I understand it, a ton of marijuana” Vucic said.

The owner of Jovanjica, wearing an ankle monitor, gave an interview to the Objektiv portal, to his own lawyer and SNS official Vladimir Djukanovic. By the way, Djukanovic is a SNS MP, President of the Parliamentary Committee for the Judiciary, which directly influences the

appointment of prosecutors and judges. He has his own talk show on the pro-regime tabloid portal Objektiv, and along the way, he also became the lawyer of former state secretary Dijana Hrkalovic. The last political, judicial and media attack on Milenkovic was carried out precisely by Hrkalovic in an interview with Objektiv. The tabloids no longer mention Inspector Mitic or Prosecutor Drecun, targeting Slobodan Milenkovic instead day after day. Defendant Hrkalovic said that Milenkovic was actually a drug dealer and that he illegally arrested Koluvija. After Hrkalovic’s statement, the High Prosecutor's Office believed her so much that they decided to interrogate in detail - who else - the policeman who discovered Jovanjica in the first place. The same Prosecutor's Office, which did not lift a finger when, eight months before, Zdenko Tomanovic, the legal representative of Milenkovic and Mitic, publicly said that the police had been given information indicating that the Serbian security services were preparing first the criminalization and then the elimination of the two police officers, to be staged to look like a mafia shootout. The Prosecutor's Office did not respond to numerous media reports and opposition parties’ statements that until recently the head of BIA, Mirko Skero, who often met and had lunch with Koluvija, was actually the link connecting the defendants in the Jovanjica case and politicians. Could the Prosecutor's Office, through conscientious efforts, actually open the door to a third indictment and the arrest of certain heads of the security services? And is the Prosecutor's Office closing the door to all policemen who would dare to arrest some "state" drug dealer in the future, precisely by summoning Milenkovic for an interview, while the lynching campaign by the pro-regime media against him is in full swing?

Jelena Zoric