A court drama of a special kind is what has just ended temporarily in Podgorica: nine Serbs, three Montenegrins and two Russians were sentenced on Thursday for terrorism and conspiracy against the state to sentences of between one and fifteen years. Both Russians, alleged agents of the GRU military intelligence service, were sentenced in absentia to 15 and 12 years in prison. The former commander of the Serbian gendarmerie should spend 8 years in prison, and two leading opposition politicians, Andija Mandić and Milan Knežević, from the Democratic Front, must each spend five years in prison.
The process lasted nineteen months, the verdict can be appealed.
The court considers it proven that GRU agent Eduard Šišmakov and Vladimir Popov organized and financed the conspiracy against Montenegrin President Milo Đukanović, who has been in power for 30 years. An armed group of Serbs and Montenegrins was allegedly organized through the intermediary, Serb Saša Sinđelić, who was tasked with carrying out a coup d'état during the parliamentary elections in October 2016, kidnapping the president and installing a pro-Russian government. And all this was supposed to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO.
Key witness "coated with all fats"
This action, if it was ever really planned like this, immediately failed. Because the alleged coup plotters were arrested on election day, Đukanović won, and the Adriatic republic of some 600.000 inhabitants joined NATO in June 2017. Saša Sinđelić, a 38-year-old man who transformed himself from the main accused to a key witness, is a special figure.
Born in Austria, he describes himself as a Pan-Slavist and Greater Serb and says that he was recruited as a volunteer on the Russian side in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He says that he came into contact with GRU agents at a Cossack gathering in 2015. Previously, he was sentenced to long-term imprisonment in Croatia for murder in 2002.
Sinđelić not only accuses both Russians, from whom he allegedly received 200.000 euros to buy weapons and create coup troops, but also claims that both Montenegrin leading opposition politicians were privy to the plans and were ready to take over power after the elimination of Đukanović.
He surrendered to the authorities when the operation was broken up because he feared for his life. The court in Podgorica seems to have widely believed the testimony of this key witness. But that same Sinđelić changed his story on a Belgrade television in March: everything he said in court, he said under duress. And no coup was planned, only demonstrations against Đukanović.
Observers of this process are also skeptical because of the age and health condition of the defendants from Serbia, whom they describe as "older, rather dilapidated people", who could hardly carry out an armed coup. It is also strange that no weapons were shown: one witness claimed that he had launched automatic rifles and machine guns, when the operation broke out, into Lake Gazivoda, in Kosovo. It seems that no one remembered or made an effort to get him out of there. And about the "Russian hand" in this playbook, different versions are circulating.
What did Moscow know?
In November 2016, Western diplomats told NZZ that Serbian authorities arrested Russian citizens, who were then deported to Moscow. A photo appeared in the local media showing Šišmakov and Popov in a city park in the center of Belgrade. That photo was first published by the British "Telegraph", which allegedly received it from Western intelligence services.
Western sources also doubt the thesis that Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of the National Security Council of the Russian Federation, used his visit to Serbia to evacuate these two agents. Perhaps, they say, it was about "freelance" - an enterprise of agents, in which the Russian authorities were possibly partially involved.
It is certain that Moscow has been trying to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO for a long time. That idea was unpopular with the Serbs in Montenegro. Anti-Western propaganda and support for pro-Russian organizations served this purpose. With the entry of Montenegro into NATO in 2017, the entire Adriatic is in Western hands, and Serbia, which is playing a seesaw between Russia and the West, is surrounded by NATO countries, with the exception of the border with Bosnia.
It is also clear that the liberal regime of Milo Đukanović is trying to turn this process into an agitprop success. The process was broadcast almost entirely on state television, and the local regional media declared it the "process of the century".
In the end, independent observers remain in doubt whether in this drama there was really a trial according to justice, law and law or it was all just an imitation of the judiciary.
Translation: Mirko Vuletić
See more:
Download the app and follow the news
FOLLOW US ON
