Ivan Stambolić
 Ivan Stambolić  (politician) | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 5 November 1936 |
| Died | 25 August 2000 (Age 63) |
| Victim of | assassination |
Retried Serbian politician killed for murky motives | |
Ivan Stambolić was a Serbian politician. He was a prominent official of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the President of Serbia in the 1980s, when it was still part of Yugoslavia.
Background
Stambolić was a close political associate and personal friend of Slobodan Milosevic during the 1980s. A split between Milosevic and Stambolic took place at the eighth session of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Serbia in September 1987. Shortly after that session, Stambolic was forced to leave the position of President of the Presidency of Serbia and to withdraw from public life.
By the time of his death, Stambolic showed no signs of having any political ambitions. In semi-retirement Stambolic worked as a consultant who, using his extensive network of contacts across the former Yugoslav republics, introduced potential business partners to each other.
Official Assassination Story
Stambolic was abducted on August 25, 2000, during a jogging trip in Belgrade. Three years later, his remains were found on Fruška gora. Subsequent investigations proved that Stambolic was killed on the same day he was abducted. Four members of the Special Operations Unit and their commander, Milorad Ulemek Legija, were arrested as his killers[1].
On 18 July 2005, these men and their co-conspirators were found guilty of the murder of Stambolić and were sentenced to between 15 and 40 years in prison. The court found that the order for Stambolić's murder came explicitly from Slobodan Milosevic, as well as his wife Mira Markovic.
Only a month after Stambolic's abduction and assassination, Milosevic lost the election for president of FR Yugoslavia, in a carefully crafted Western regime change operation. He was removed on October 5, 2000, when, under the pressure of mass demonstrations, Vojislav Kostunica, candidate for the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, took power, after having declared Milosevic's victory was due to fraud.
