Zoran Djindjić was killed 22 years ago today

Djindjić, the long-time leader of the Democratic Party, one of DOS leaders, the first figure of the changes on October 5, 2000, was then 50 years old.

He was in the position of the Prime Minister of Serbia since January 25, 2001, when he replaced the interim cabinet of Milomir Minic formed at the end of October 2000.

He entered political life in his student days, when he mostly had radical left-wing ideas. He was active in the student organization at the Faculty of Philosophy and interested in the legacy of anarchism. Apparently, he was especially close to Kroptkin, an anarchist, and later to the thinkers of the Frankfurt School.

Zoran Djindjic was born in Bosanski Samac on August 1, 1952. The father, a military person, was there according to the requirements of the service.
He lived in Travnik for about ten years, where he also started high school. He finished the last two grades in Belgrade, at the Ninth Gymnasium.

He then enrolled in philosophy studies at the University of Belgrade. Those were the years of turbulent student activities, immediately after the events of 1968.

He managed to establish himself in the Association of Students of the Faculty of Philosophy.

He was taken into custody even then. He was tried in Ljubljana in November 1974. The six students prosecuted at the time were rescued by the pressure of the international public. German Chancellor Willy Brandt is said to have interceded for him.

He completed his basic studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 1974.

He continued his further training in Germany, in Frankfurt, and then in Konstanz, where he received his doctorate in 1979 with the thesis "Problems of the foundation of critical social theory", and his mentor was Jürgen Habermas, one of the most prominent philosophers of the second half of the 20th century.

He returned to Yugoslavia in 1989, when he participated in the renewal of the Democratic Party with a group of 12 intellectuals. In parallel, he was engaged in business, more or less successfully.

At that time, he was no longer carried away by the ideas of the radical left, he became mostly a classical bourgeois liberal.

He managed to fight for the leadership of the Democratic Party in January 1994, instead of Dragoljub Mićunović. He was the head of the Democratic Party until his death in March 2003.

He was a prominent leader of the opposition to the 1990s regime and led several political campaigns in the fight against the government of Slobodan Milošević.

As one of the leaders of the "Together" coalition, he was elected mayor of Belgrade on January 21, 1997, but was soon replaced by the will of the coalition partners.

He was a key figure in the political changes of 2000, as the head of the central election headquarters and coordinator of the promotional campaign of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) for the federal elections on September 24, 2000.

In September 1999, the American weekly "Time" included Djindjic among the 14 leading European politicians of the third millennium.

He is the winner of the prestigious German award "Bambi" for the year 2000 in the field of politics, and in 2002 he received the award of the "Polak" Foundation in Prague for his contribution to the development of democracy in Serbia.

He is the author of several books ("Subjectivity and violence", "Autumn of dialectics", "Yugoslavia as an unfinished state", "Serbia neither east nor west") and a number of philosophical and political essays.

He also engaged in translation, and was especially active in political journalism. He was an advocate of the idea of ​​European integration, convinced that this is the best path for Serbia, despite numerous obstacles, not only in Serbia.

He was assassinated on March 12, 2003. He was shot in the chest, in the courtyard of the Government of Serbia building, at 12:25 p.m.

His bodyguard Milan Veruović was seriously wounded on that occasion.

Soon after, a state of emergency was declared and the "Saber" operation was launched, which was previously prepared as part of the intended crackdown on organized crime.

Members of the "Zemun clan" criminal group, whose members and collaborators were among the organizers and perpetrators of the murder, were then arrested, and after a three-and-a-half-year trial, convicted.

Among the perpetrators were some members of the then Special Operations Unit, which was later disbanded.

According to the verdict, Milorad Ulemek Legija, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison, ordered Zvezdan Jovanović, a member of the JSO, to kill Djindjić.