SERBIA: Serbia's former security chief was jailed for seven years yesterday for his role in a murder case involving a leading opponent of then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, lawyers at the trial said.
The Belgrade district court found Radomir Markovic guilty of assisting in trying to cover up the crime - a staged car crash in 1999 - according to Markovic's lawyer, Mr Dusan Masic.
Markovic, who denied any involvement in the incident, is the most senior member of Mr Milosevic's old inner circle to have been jailed in Serbia since reformers took power in 2000.
Other ex-allies are awaiting trial at the UN war crimes tribunal. But the verdict infuriated victims' relatives, who had expected Markovic to be held directly responsible for an attempt on the life of Mr Vuk Draskovic, then leader of Serbia's largest opposition party.
Markovic, a feared figure during the final years of Mr Milosevic's rule as head of the state security service, had originally been charged with murder and attempted murder for allegedly trying to assassinate Mr Draskovic in a staged collision south of Belgrade in October 1999.
Mr Draskovic escaped with minor injuries, but his brother-in-law and three others travelling in the convoy died.
It was unclear from the ruling whether the court accepted that there had been a plot to kill Mr Draskovic.
The reading of the ruling in the packed courtroom had to be halted amid chaotic protests from the relatives, and was concluded in the judges' chamber with only the lawyers present.
Relatives and supporters of Mr Draskovic shouted "murderers" at Markovic and the panel of two judges and three laypeople as security guards took the accused out of the room.
"The judge escaped, both him and the accused," Mr Draskovic told reporters.
"Today, in this courtroom, those who had been killed ... were killed again." Two co-accused, former secret police, were found guilty of planning to murder a person who the ruling did not name, and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment, Mr Masic said.
He said Markovic has been convicted of "assisting those who were accused of murder in covering up after the murder". A fourth suspect was acquitted.
Lawyer Mr Vladimir Bozovic, representing the victims' families, described the verdict as "shameful". Both sides will appeal.
Markovic has been in prison since 2001, when he was jailed for a year for revealing state secrets. He served his term but has been kept in custody during the murder trial.
Mr Draskovic has always maintained that the crash in October 1999, in which a truck swerved across the road and ploughed into cars carrying him and his aides, was an assassination attempt by Mr Milosevic's secret police.