A month before Jill Dando was shot dead, Milorad Ulemek was asked to murder a target on his doorstep who he later found was a leading journalist, a court heard.
The ruthless assassin claimed he was fighting in Kosovo in March 1999 when he was summoned to Belgrade by spymaster Radomir Markovic.
Markovic and Ulemek are serving 40 years in jail for plotting two assassinations for brutal dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006.
In 2016, Serbian Ulemek, 56, gave evidence at the trial of four former intelligence officers charged with the murder of newspaper owner Slavko Curuvija. Mr Curuvija was shot dead outside his Belgrade home on April 11, 1999. Jill was killed on April 26.
Mr Curuvija had upset Milosevic and the president’s powerful wife Mira, a former friend. Like Jill, he was going home when he was ambushed from behind, forced to the ground and shot at close range in the head.
Ulemek said in 2014 that Markovic asked him to perform a “special task”. He claimed there was one person who “seriously endangers the security of the state” who should be “removed”. Ulemek said he declined the request because he was needed in Kosovo.
Nicknamed the Legionnaire, after serving in the French Foreign Legion, Ulemek has played a leading role in some of Serbia’s most violent acts.
He is reported to have made millions running one of Serbia’s top crime gangs and was kingmaker for the first democratic leader, only to plot his murder. Ulemek shot up two nightclubs and was suspected of contact with Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, who was inspired by “Serb nationalists”.
Ulemek was born in Belgrade on March 15, 1968, to father Milan, an officer in Josip Tito’s Yugoslav People’s Army, and Croatian mother Natalija.
The school dropout, who hung out with young criminals, reportedly fled Serbia in the 1980s while on the run for a raid on a sports shop in Belgrade.
He is said to have lived in London learning English, and then France. Reportedly cleared of murder in Paris after accidentally killing a man in a fight, and under threat of deportation, he joined France’s Foreign Legion in 1986. He is believed to have served in Chad and the Middle East.
Ulemek was said to have been based in Corsica, and was a sergeant specialising in sniper combat and sabotage. He “deserted” around 1991 to join the Serbian Volunteer Guard, or Tigers, who were fighting in the Yugoslav wars.
The paramilitary outfit was set up by warlord Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan. Ulemek is said to have become close to the alleged war criminal who was killed in 2000 – even acting as his best man when he wed pop singer Ceca in 1995. Milosevic’s trial at the International Criminal Tribunal heard Ulemek trained volunteers at a base in Croatia.
In 1994 he briefly married and took his wife’s name of Lukovic. Like Arkan, Ulemek mixed business with war and in the mid-90s he took over Belgrade’s Zombi club. But he was said to have infuriated Arkan in 1996 when he became deputy chief of the Jedinica za specijalne operacije (JSO) – a 500-man unit of the Serbian Intelligence Service which acted as Milosevic’s guard.
A witness described murders carried out by his JSO squad chief in Kosovo in 1999, claiming he killed two unarmed young Albanians in civilian clothes and saw four prisoners forced into a house before it was blown up with grenades. He also said he saw Ulemek in Kosovo twice.
McMafia author and Balkans expert Misha Glenny called the JSO a “critical node” where the state partnered organised crime.
Ulemek teamed up with mafia boss Dusan Spasojevic who led the Zemun Clan, a major player in the heroin trade. The Legionnaire is said to have earned £8.6million from kidnappings the Clan carried out.
By 1999 Ulemek was under the command of head of Serbian security services Radomir Markovic and had become the JSO’s de facto commander.He was later convicted of the attempted murder of Vuk Draskovic, injured when a truck smashed into his motorcade in 1999, killing four officials.
And in 2000, he plotted the murder of Ivan Stambolic, the ex-Yugoslav president who helped Milosevic rise up the ranks of Tito’s communist party.
But the dictator turned on his ex-mentor, ordering his murder when Stambolic revealed he planned to run against him. Stambolic was found in a shallow grave in 2003 – shot in the back of the neck. As Serbia rose up against Milosevic after the disappearance of his rival in 2000, Ulemek and the Zemun Clan switched sides to join opposition leader Zoran Djindjic.
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Ulemek vowed to back Milosevic’s democratic opponent in exchange for keeping his job. But the relationship with Djindjic, who sent Milosevic to The Hague, soured a year later when he tried to free Serbia from organised crime.
Ulemek was suspended in 2001 for torching a disco and opening up with automatic gunfire. A month later he opened fire in a nightclub. Djindjic was killed by a sniper as he got out of his car in 2003.
Ulemek surrendered in 2004 at a Belgrade house shared with his second wife, Aleksandra Ivanovic, mum of three of his four daughters, after apparently hiding in the former Yugoslavia and Canada. In 2007 he and ex-deputy, Zvezdan Jovanovic, were convicted of conspiring with 10 others, most Zemun members, to kill Djindjic.
Both got 40 years. It was reported that Ulemek has had three escape bids foiled at Zabela high-security jail and he can request early release in 2030.