Ex-Yugoslav spy testifies in German trial about 1983 murder of dissident
July 6, 2016 Leave a comment
A former officer in the Cold-War-era Yugoslav intelligence service has begun testifying at a trial concerning the 1983 murder in Germany of a Yugoslav dissident by assassins sent by authorities in Belgrade. Stjepan Đureković, who was of Croatian nationality, defected from Yugoslavia to Germany in 1982, while he was director of Yugoslavia’s state-owned INA oil company. Upon his arrival in Germany, he was granted political asylum and began associating with Croatian nationalist émigré groups that were active in the country. He was killed on July 28, 1983, in Wolfratshausen, Bavaria. His killing was part of an operation codenamed DUNAV, which was conducted by the Yugoslav State Security Service, known by its Serbo-Croatian acronym, UDBA.
In 2009, following testimonies by several former UDBA agents, who were arrested in connection with the crime, the Office of the German Federal Prosecutor issued a European Arrest Warrant for Josip Perković, a former senior official in the UDBA. He is accused of having played a central role in organizing Đureković’s assassination. In 2014, Croatia, where Perković has been living since the demise of Yugoslavia, agreed to extradite Perković to Germany. The agreement materialized after heavy pressure was exercised on Croatia by the European Commission, after the country’s admission into the European Union.
Perković is now co-defendant in the trial taking place in Munich, along with another former UDBA intelligence official, Zdravko Mustać (see photo). Tuesday’s proceedings included testimony by another former UDBA man, Vinko Sindicić, who named both Perković and Mustać as direct accomplices in Đureković’s murder. Sindicić told the court that Perković was acting on orders to kill the German-based dissident, which came directly from the office of UDBA Director Zdravko Mustać. He added that Perković helped organize the logistics of Đureković’s assassination, including the location in Munich where the killing actually took place. Sindicić told the court that a female UDBA operative living in Munich was also involved in organizing the operation, and that the weapons used to kill Đureković had been secretly transported to Germany through Jadroagent, an international shipping and freight company based in Yugoslavia. During his testimony, which lasted for several hours, Sindicić claimed that the two men who carried out Đureković’s murder were UDBA assassins Branko Bijelić and Luka Sekula. The former died in 2004, but the latter still lives in Sweden and has yet to be extradited to Germany in connection with the murder trial.
It is worth noting that Sindicić spent a decade behind bars for his role in a failed attempt to kill another Yugoslav dissident émigré, Nikola Stedul, whom the UDBA tried to kill in the United Kingdom in 1988. Further charges against him were dropped in 2000, in a trial where he stood accused of complicity in the murder of yet another exiled Yugoslav dissident, Bruno Busić, who was killed in Paris in 1978. Both Perković and Mustać deny any involvement in Đureković’s assassination.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 July 2016 | Permalink
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killed the group’s leader.
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Muslim man held in New York prison claims he was CIA spy
July 7, 2016 3 Comments
According to The Times, Skoro came to the US in 1994. Six years later, he was convicted in a New York court of transporting drugs and laundering nearly $700,000 in criminal proceeds. But while in prison, Skoro was recruited as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and was tasked with monitoring inmates with militant Islamist leanings. In 2007, when Skoro was released from prison and deported back to Kosovo, he allegedly continued working for US intelligence. He told The Times that he was trained by US operatives in a CIA safe house in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia before taking on assignments in the Balkans, the Middle East and even Pakistan. Throughout that time, Skoro says he posed as a militant Islamist who had become radicalized while serving his prison sentence in America. He claims to have supplied the CIA with intelligence relating to al-Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist groups.
However, in 2010, while traveling to a CIA safe house in Macedonia for a meeting, he was shot by assailants who probably knew he was working for a foreign spy agency. That incident prompted the CIA to sever its relationship with him, dismissing him from his agent status and offering him approximately $40,000 in compensation. Soon afterwards, Skoro made his way to Canada, from where he entered the US illegally, in November 2014. Before getting arrested in Brooklyn in February, he says he made contact with US intelligence officials, offering to spy for the US against the Islamic State. But his offer was not accepted. The Times article speculates that US intelligence may have no use for Skoro because his identity has been compromised, or because his reliability has come into question.
Currently Skoro is being held without bond at the Bergin County Jail in northern New Jersey, because federal prosecutors believe he might flee if released. The Times contacted the CIA, the FBI and police sources, but all declined to comment.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 07 July 2016 | Permalink
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