“Đinđić trial test for Serbian judiciary”

“Đinđić trial test for Serbian judiciary”

“I knew that the Đinđić trial was a test for Serbia’s judiciary that had to show it was indeed capable of handling the case. It is not easy for any judge to deliver a verdict, particularly one that envisages maximum sentences for the accused, but I have never given it a thought,” she said.

“From the moment you find a defendant guilty and decide on the sentence, your job is done. The delivery of the verdict is a technical matter,” Mesarović argued.

According to her, Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić had not been killed by the underground, rather by the part of the MUP Special Operations Unit (JSO).

“The convicted assassins were members of the Ministry of Interior (MUP) at the time of the murder. It is true that prior to the murder they had been committing the most ferocious crimes by order of someone of a higher rank, so it is difficult to believe they ventured to kill the prime minister without any instructions from above,” Mesarović explained.

“However, I have already said that the Court was not presented with the indictment that brought charges against the persons that might have instructed the murder, and I cannot speculate as to who these persons might be,” she noted.

The Presiding Judge also described how awkward she felt when first-accused Milorad Ulemek entered the courtroom wearing a t-shirt depicting a growling wolf–symbol of the JSO.

“You are facing a person with a disturbing attitude and you can’t concentrate. You are looking at a growling wolf whose jaws are moving whenever Ulemek moves. I have no idea what he wanted to achieve by it, but I realized that I had to do something to make it go away, and finalize the trial,” she went on to say.

“I did not see it as a direct threat, rather as a message to all of us: We are everywhere around you,” she said at the end of an interview to the Blic daily newspaper.