Ibar Highway Assassination Attempt - Repeat Trial (2005)

Repeat Trial (2005)

The re-trial, which consisted of an expanded indictment list that now also included 8 more individuals (Milorad Ulemek, Mihalj Kertes, Branko Đurić, Dragiša Dinić, Vidan Mijailović, and 3 more JSO members), wrapped up on 29 June 2005 in the Belgrade District Court. It resulted in first degree sentences for the following individuals:

• Milorad Ulemek (a former JSO commander), received 15 years for taking part in the assassination attempt.
• five other JSO members (Nenad Ilić, Nenad Bujošević, Duško Maričić, Branko Berček, and Leonid Milivojević) also received 15 years each for taking part in the assassination attempt.
• Radomir Marković (the former Serbian State Security Service chief), received 10 years for helping those that directly carried out the crime by aiding them after they committed it. He was also indicted with a much more serious charge of organizing the assassination attempt, but the court found him not guilty of that.
• Mihalj Kertes (the former Federal Customs director), received 3 years also for aiding the immediate executioners of the assassination attempt after the crime was committed.
• Dragiša Dinić (former chief of Serbian Interior Ministry traffic police), received 2 years.
• Vidan Mijailović (member of Serbian Interior Ministry traffic police), received 1 year.

The remaining two individuals on the indictment list were absolved of any responsibility: Milan Radonjić (the former State Security's Belgrade Branch chief) and Branko Đurić (the former Police Chief in Belgrade).

The sentence was made official on 23 November 2005, almost 5 months after it was delivered, because presiding judge Bojan Mišić took an unusually long amount of time to write it up. This led to veiled public accusations of time wasting with the intent of sabotaging the appeals process which has a 1-year window from the date of the verdict being delivered, but can only start once the verdict is official. By taking almost 5 months to make the verdict official, judge Mišić effectively made that time period unavailable for appeals, leaving only 7 months for the appeals instead of a full year.