A Serbian special operations police unit has been disbanded following the arrest of its deputy commander yesterday on suspicion of murdering Prime Minister Mr Zoran Djindjic.
Serbia's new Prime Minister Mr Zoran Zivkovic said the 200-strong Unit for Special Operations (JSO), had peacefully disbanded. The war-hardened unit was set up under the rule of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
Speaking in Belgrade at his first regular news conference since taking office last week, Mr Zivkovic said several police and state security officials were linked to the powerful crime group accused of planning the killing and that some of them were involved in the assassination.
Yesterday police arrested the man they believed shot Mr Djindjic outside government buildings in Belgrade and also found the murder weapon, a sniper rifle. He was identified as Mr Zvezdan Jovanovic, deputy commander of the JSO.
Police arrested another JSO member suspected of involvement in the killing and detained its commander over links to the crime gang allegedly behind it. The JSO's former commander Milorad "Legija" Lukovic is among the crime bosses believed to have masterminded Mr Djindjic's murder in a bid to avoid arrests resulting form the reformist policies of MR Djindjic.
The Former prime minister had enraged nationalists by sending Mr Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague in 2001. He had also begun a clamp down on the organised crime that flourished during Milosevic's turbulent decade in power.
Legija, reportedly close to the suspected assassin, and two other Belgrade crime gang leaders named as Dusan Spasojevic and Mile Lukovic remain at large. "There is a lot of evidence that they were at the top of the pyramid of evil," Mr Zivkovic said.
He said most JSO members were professionals who would be redeployed to other units, but that a small number of them were involved in the assassination and in other crime.