Serbia: Extreme nationalists may have killed the man who forced Milosevic out, writes Chris Stephen.
For investigators probing the assassination of Zoran Djindjic yesterday, the problem is not finding suspects, but being overwhelmed by them.
"It could have been the army. It could have been some nationalist circles. It could have been the mafia," said a Belgrade journalist. "Or maybe some worker angry they have lost their job in the reforms, or maybe some factory manager angry that their plant has closed. The list is long."
To the West, the silver-haired Djindjic (50) was the lynch-pin of Serbia's progress from rogue state to normality. But to many in Belgrade he was the enemy.
The extreme nationalists are an obvious suspect group: Djindjic is the man credited with engineering the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic three years ago.
Milosevic had lost the Yugoslav presidential election, but tried to cling on to power. Djindjic is credited with persuading the army to sit on its hands. The demonstrators did the rest, with hundreds of thousands filling the streets and storming the government offices.
A year later, Djindjic, by then Serbian prime minister, sent the police to arrest Milosevic and deliver him to the Americans, who flew him to The Hague to face war crimes charges.
The end of the Milosevic era meant the end for a whole power-elite: the gangsters and sharks whose corruption and profiteering had made them fortunes during the years of war and economic sanctions.
One enemy who can be ruled out, however, is the man Djindjic helped to power - former Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica.
Kostunica took power from Milosevic, but was out of a job this January when Yugoslavia ceased to be and became, instead, Serbia-Montenegro.
Kostunica was furious that Djindjic used Serb state police, rather than Yugoslav police, to arrest Milosevic - a move made so that Kostunica need not find out about it.
However, Kostunica has made a career opposing violence. And, while he was no friend of Djindjic, he is likely to be concerned about any new wave of nationalism.
Next on the suspects' list is the army. Under intense Western pressure, Djindjic had forced it to begin arresting officers accused of war crimes.
And just last weekend international officials stepped up the pressure - determined to get Djindjic to arrest the former Bosnian Serb army commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, who is being looked after by former army generals in Belgrade.
Last weekend, Djindjic forced the army to declare that it was not guarding Mladic and would not stand in the way of the police should they come calling to send the general to The Hague.
More generally, Djindjic was regarded by many Serbs as being too close to the West - in particular to the United States, whose war planes were busy bombing Belgrade only four years ago.
Djindjic also had his own dark dealings. While many mafia overlords lost power with the fall of Milosevic, others managed to strike deals with Djindjic. One source who has watched these said: "Djindjic had his fingers in many things - he had his fingers everywhere."
And then there is simple disaffection: Serbs have not found things easy after the war. Djindjic had been busy tearing down an economy unreformed since Communist days and thousands of workers and miners lost their jobs as the new economic reality began to bite.
Djindjic was a youthful 50. He lived for some years in Germany and many diplomats, bemoaning the prejudice of other Serb leaders, would talk about how this politician "spoke the West's language".
The son of a Yugoslav army officer, Djindjic made a habit of rebelliousness. Expelled from school, he fell foul of authority again in 1974 when he set up an anti-communist student group. In the 1980s he helped to found the Democratic Party, taking advantage of the unwinding of the Communist government following the death of Tito in 1980.
He emerged in the 1990s as a key opposition politician, though he clashed with rivals, notably Vuk Draskovic, a man who long felt that he, rather than Djindjic, should have benefited from Milosevic's fall.