Brankica Stanković – her very self

When Rocko Milovic, Head of Criminal Police, says that you are “the most endangered person in Serbia”, this is serious, as Rocko is a very serious man (I know him).

Brankica Stanković – her very self

When Rocko Milovic, Head of Criminal Police, says that you are “the most endangered person in Serbia”, this is serious, as Rocko is a very serious man (I know him).

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When Rocko assigns Sekula and his colleagues for your security, this is even more serious, as Sekula is a very serious man (I know him, too). All this happened to our colleague Brankica Stankovic at the beginning of December 2009, all of a sudden, while famous series “Insider” on football mafia was aired. After almost four years, Brankica had written down all about this on 360 pages, “Insider, my story”.

This football mafia was not the most important theme for “Insider”, but it is “indicative” (Rocko and Sekula would say) that it was the most dangerous. Brankica and her team had done nastier and more important themes, to begin with the assassination of Zoran Djindjic, “Manuscripts do not burn” with which they disturbed everyone, let’s not list them all. There were more to it: Port of Belgrade, Kolubara, Cyprus money, etc. This is what Rocko Milovic and Slavisa Softic had nicely explained to Brankica as “cumulative effect“: when you annoy various people, they unite in a joint venture operation and look for the contractor that will find executors.

It turned out, according to the data from the book, that main undertaker was Luka Bojovic; while executors should be diverse characters, one of them being certain Vitomir Bajic, Montenegrin gangster tied with certain non-governmental organizations from the southern Italy, and he revealed the plans on killing Brankica in hope that he will evade extradition to this country. He was extradited anyway, and he was found hanged in prison; policemen do not believe in suicide (“he was not such a person“). He revealed that “two sniper rifles were bought” for Brankica. It turned out later that he had rented an apartment above Brankica’s; gendarmerie had burst into it, but he had already split. Brankica thinks that at one point she saw Sretko Kalinic in front of her home (that was prior to being assigned security); policemen think that this had nothing to do with her, but with Saric brothers in whose apartment this unfortunate Vitomir used to live.

You should buy and read this book; if you watched “Insider“, and you all did, it will be clearer why; if you would like to become journalist (to the detriment of your mother!), you should then learn it by heart. You will see why. What we find most interesting here is primarily criminal-operational story on Brankica Stankovic’s protection. Pray: at one point, Sekula tells her annoyed (if something like this could be said about him…) that he and his colleagues in the course of three and a half years of protecting her had identified 173 persons of suspicious behavior close to her; out of that number, 170 had gone through crime evidence. Some persons showed up several times; one is recognized as former Special Operations Unit (JSO) member, but he managed to escape. Some persons started visiting premises where members of Brankica’s security used to come prior to protecting her. There were several cases of monitoring police vehicles in which Brankica and her escort had been; once, they witnessed chasing on the highway Belgrade-Nis, but they had lost them.

The story is, to conclude, more than serious. Brankica Stankovic had written it primarily sincerely and emotionally, but with the consent from the police representatives to say everything that was not regarded as such a big endangerment of operational security, which was nice from their side: we have found out interesting details. They had known, for example, that the gang prepares her assassination in the Netherlands, where she should have attended certain event, so they warned her and her crew not to go: you are safer here than abroad, Rocko informed her. Brankica, small and angry as she is, rushed to Miljko Radosavljevic, special prosecutor and found out that he was informed about this. Sasa Vukadinovic, director of Security Information Agency (BIA) was also present, but he told her what he heard.

All right: all of us had got into this or that trouble due to journalistic profession; Slavko Curuvija and Milan Pantic especially. Brankica’s case, however, seriously indicates what happens when it comes to the “accumulation” of revengeful and, I would say, more preventive measures. Brankica and “Insider“ had become – due to high quality journalistic and uncompromising approach – political theme par excellence; some people couldn’t bare it any longer, so it contributed to creating already indisputable consortium for abolishing this story once and for all. Suspected members of this company are numerous; once when you finish reading the book, you’ll understand.

The book is – primarily and above all – sincere, but also informative. Brankica is small, angry and troublesome; it is not sure who suffered more in these almost four years of securing this impossible and charming young woman: she or Sekula and his colleagues. They had become friends in the end, as it inevitably happens with nice folks.

This article originally appeared in the Belgrade-based weekly Vreme

Brankica Stanković's Insajder, Moja Priča (Insider, My Story) was published by Samizdat B92