Lawyers in Serbia strike after one who defended Milosevic is shot and killed
Dragoslav Ognjanović/Media Centar Belgrade via Wikimedia Commons.
Updated: A weeklong lawyer strike is underway in Serbia after a lawyer who defended former president Slobodan Milosevic was shot and killed Saturday in the capital city of Belgrade.
The murder of Dragoslav Ognjanović, whose age is listed as 56 or 57 in various media outlets including the BBC, RadioFreeEurope, Reuters and Time, sparked the protest.
Ognjanović was a part of the legal team that defended Milosevic in The Hague for crimes against humanity, including genocide. Milosevic died of a heart attack in his jail cell in 2006 before the trial was completed.
The strike, which began Monday, is a complete suspension of work and intended to raise awareness of the danger of practicing law in Serbia, according to a joint statement from the Bar Association of Serbia and Bar Association of Belgrade.
The murder “shows in a most drastic way the circumstances in which lawyers in Serbia conduct their professional work,” the statement reads. “This killing is only the latest in a series of attacks on lawyers, many of which have remained unsolved.”
In the past 10 years, bar association spokespeople told Balkan Insight, there have been three murders and 50 attacks of attorneys in the country, adding that 95 percent are unsolved.
Viktor Gostiljac, head of the Bar Association of Serbia, told the BBC “[we will] exert maximum pressure on the competent state authorities in order to find the perpetrators” of Ognjanović’s death.
The strike, Gostiljac said, is a reminder that attacks on lawyers are an attack on the state. The Judges’ Association of Serbia expressed solidarity with this sentiment, Balkan Insight reports.
After Milosevic’s death, Ognjanović’s law practice included defending people tied to Serbia’s organized crime gangs.
Currently, Serbia and Montenegro, which voted to secede from Serbia in 2006, are experiencing violence due to an ongoing drug war between gangs. Between 2012 and May 2018, the two nations totaled 115 killings tied to organized crime, Marija Ristić, a regional director for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, said in a tweet.
Serbian President Alexander Vucic told Time that the “clan war over the drug market is becoming something that the state must deal with in a more brutal way.” He also said investigators have leads on Ognjanović’s death.
The American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative has a regional program that includes Serbia, which focuses on increasing criminal defense capacity, according to their website. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ognjanovic, who was killed last night, was former Milosevic's lawyer, but also defence attorney in several high profile mafia cases in Serbia and Montenegro.
— Marija Ristić (@Marien__R) July 29, 2018
115 people have been killed in these two countries in mafia-style murders between 2012 and the end of May this year. https://t.co/tOQZOymRA9
Updated Aug. 1 to reflect ABA ROLI does not have an office in Serbia anymore and corrects how Milosevic died.
