For more than a week, crime and punishment has been the predominant theme in Serbia.

On May 23, 12 men accused of involvement in the murder of Serbia’s first reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic were found guilty by a special court in Belgrade. Zvezdan Jovanovic and Milorad Ulmek, two of the main suspects in the assassination, were given the maximum 40-year prison sentence. Ulmek was sentenced for organising the murder and Jovanovic for carrying it out. Both were former members of the parliamentary police until the Special Operations Unit (JSO) was formed in 1996.

Djindjic was shot dead on March 12 2003 outside a government building, shortly after delivering a speech.

“This was a political murder, a criminal deed aimed against the state,” said presiding judge Nata Mesarovic, reading the verdict to a packed court, which included Serbian president Boris Tadic and former members of the Djindjic cabinet, AFP reported. Djindjic was murdered “after democratic changes in Serbia, when most citizens believed that the situation in Serbia could be changed and life could be better,” Mesarovic said.

The trial lasted more than three years. It encountered many obstacles, including the murder of a witness, resignation of a judge, and sacking of a prosecutor. The case also included an interesting turn in one of the men’s pleas. After his arrest, within days of the assassination, Jovanovic confessed to the murder. He told police “Djindjic’s assassination was politically motivated” to obstruct attempts to arrest suspects wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“[Ulmek] insisted that Djindjic had to be murdered in order to stop extraditions to The Hague tribunal,” Jovanovic said in a statement at the time.

However, in his closing statements made in April, Jovanovic said confessions had been given to police “under duress”.

Having pleaded not guilty, the pair is expected to appeal against the verdict, but the process could take several months.

Vladan Batic, the justice minister in Djindjic’s government, said that he was satisfied with the ruling.

“The executioners have been sentenced, but now we have to establish who inspired the assassination, and they should be sought on the political scene, among the anti-war crimes lobby,” Batic told journalists, as quoted by AFP.

Djindjic’s Party Democratic (DS) said that they were satisfied with the outcome of the trial. In a statement, they said that the verdict was of historic importance and would affect all of society, because it proved that the judiciary was “competent to defy pressures and adversities and try organisers and perpetrators of such an ominous crime,” Serbian news agency B92 reported.

The outcome of this trial is indeed of great significance to Serbia’s future EU-related plans. Djindjic was the first democratically-elected prime minister with a pro-Western stance. Many Serbians believe their country would by now have come much closer to the EU if Djindjic’s term in office had not been cut short by his murder.

Also on the crime scene, on May 28 B92 reported that Serbian police had arrested war crime suspects in the Croatian village of Lovas in 1991. According to B92’s sources, those arrested were former members of paramilitary and volunteer units, suspected of having killed 22 civilians and abusing a many others, in October 1991. The War Crimes Prosecution has not yet confirmed the report.

Also on May 28, a special court in Belgrade began a trial of the so-called “road mafia”. Fifty-three people are accused of abuses involving foreign truck fees, worth $583 million. Half of the suspects have been arrested. Three men have been identified as leaders of the criminal gang. Between 2004 and 2006 the gang has been stealing money in Belgrade and Nis from the Serbian Roads public company, using a special computer programme and technical equipment.

With such recent developments, Serbia is likely to satisfy Western observers. Nonetheless, the ICTY is still in search of six Serbian war crime suspects, one of whom, Ratko Mladoc, has been indicted by the ICTY on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity - including the massacre of at least 7500 Muslim men and boys from the town of Srebrenica in 1995.