BELGRADE — Shortly after arresting a man suspected of main a prison gang final month in reference to a collection of killings involving beheadings and torture, Serbian cops raided what they consider was the band’s secret lair: a bunkerlike room in the bowels of a stadium used by Partizan Belgrade, a storied soccer crew in the Serbian capital.
The room, situated in a defunct restaurant beneath the stands, has been sealed off as a crime scene after investigators attempting to find proof of ties between soccer hooligans and organized crime discovered weapons there.
The wall exterior is daubed in white and black paint with the identify that the Partizan followers use for themselves: “the Gravediggers.”
The identify is nicely deserved. Serbian soccer followers, not less than those that in prepandemic days used to cram into the rowdy south stands of Partizan’s stadium and the equally anarchic north facet of the world used by its Belgrade archrivals, Red Star, have lengthy had a fame for extraordinary violence.
A French fan who traveled to Belgrade in 2009 to cheer on his crew, Toulouse, in a sport towards Partizan died after being overwhelmed with iron bars and bicycle chains. In that case, 14 Partizan followers had been convicted of homicide.
The violent tendencies have additionally made Serbian soccer followers, significantly these of the 2 rival Belgrade groups, a highly effective pressure on the road and in the nation’s tumultuous politics.
The query now consuming Serbia is what led to the arrest final month of Veljko Belivuk, who’s suspected of being a gangster and the chief of a group of violent Partizan followers. He has lengthy operated with impunity, and is reported to have had shut ties to the federal government and safety forces.
In the federal government’s telling, Mr. Belivuk is a brutal mobster whose arrest alerts a willpower to rein in the prison bands that helped gas the horrific violence of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, assassinated a reform-minded prime minister in 2003 and have hobbled Serbia’s efforts to turn out to be a regular European nation.
“Our message is that we’re done with this gang,” President Aleksandar Vucic, who’s a devoted Red Star fan and has admitted to brawling at video games in the previous, declared on March 6 after state tv aired grisly photographs of a beheaded corpse and the mangled physique of a younger man with a Red Star tattoo on his leg — purported victims of Mr. Belivuk’s gang.
Investigators have additionally linked Mr. Belivuk to a decade-long drug battle between two rival prison clans over management of a profitable trafficking route throughout the Adriatic Sea from Serbia’s neighbor, Montenegro, to Western Europe.
The authorities’s model of why Mr. Belivuk and 16 of his confederates had been arrested, nevertheless, has dismayed those that comply with the workings of Serbian soccer golf equipment and their followers, essentially the most violent of that are often called “ultras.”
“Our soccer hooligans are controlled by the state — they do what the state tells them to do,” mentioned Mirko Poledica, the president of the Union of Professional Football Players “Independence,” Serbia’s essential affiliation of gamers.
Violent followers like Mr. Belivuk, he mentioned, are such a fearsome pressure that controlling them has at all times been a precedence for any authorities that desires to keep away from hassle and keep in energy.
Mr. Belivuk was a device of the federal government, he mentioned, used to assist break up opposition rallies and present avenue safety for Mr. Vucic’s inauguration in 2017.
Ana Brnabic, Serbia’s prime minister, mentioned in an interview that Mr. Vucic, removed from being Mr. Belivuk’s accomplice, was his goal. “I have credible information that his life was in danger,” she mentioned. “It was high time to act because of all the threats made by organized crime.”
But she conceded that prison gangs had developed “strong links” to state and safety buildings, and that these had been now being investigated and uprooted. “Obviously, the mafia would not be so strong if it did not have support in the government,” she mentioned.
Adding to a widespread view that Mr. Vucic is hiding one thing, nevertheless, has been a vicious vilification marketing campaign in pro-government media shops directed at those that have challenged the president’s story of a simple crackdown on organized crime.
Vladimir Vuletic, a Belgrade regulation professor and former Partizan vice president who went public with accusations of presidency collusion with the arrested gang chief, has been savaged each day in tabloid newspapers supporting Mr. Vucic.
Ms. Brnabic denied the marketing campaign was orchestrated by the federal government.
Also smeared by the tabloids has been Krik, a highly respected group of investigative journalists that has reported for years on hyperlinks between authorities officers and Mr. Belivuk’s gang.
Stevan Dojcinovic, Krik’s editor in chief, mentioned that organized crime in Serbia — and authorities officers — had lengthy been tied to the “brutal force of nature” supplied by soccer hooligans.
“Politicians have always been afraid of our hooligans. No matter who is in power they always form a partnership with them,” he mentioned.
The difficulties of partnering with the hooligans, nevertheless, was made evident by the demise of Serbia’s former president, Slobodan Milosevic. Under his rule in the 1990s, hooligans flooded into the ranks of state-sponsored paramilitary teams that unfold mayhem in Bosnia and Kosovo after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
That Mr. Milosevic, for whom Mr. Vucic served as info minister and whose safety providers labored carefully with hooligans and criminals, was in critical hassle turned clear when Red Star’s ultras began chanting “Slobodan Kill Yourself!” at video games. (His dad and mom had each died in suicides.)
Mr. Milosevic misplaced energy in 2000 after the ultras led college students and different protesters in storming the Parliament constructing in Belgrade.
When Yugoslavia, of which Serbia was then a half, started to unravel in the late 1980s, an early signal of impending battle got here in May 1990 when Red Star traveled for a sport in Zagreb, the capital of the neighboring Yugoslav republic of Croatia. The sport was suspended after rival followers staged a violent melee and set fireplace to the stadium.
Among the Red Star supporters who had traveled to Zagreb for the match was Mr. Vucic, who later boasted that he “often fought” at video games.
Mr. Poledica, the chief of the soccer gamers’ affiliation, mentioned: “Our politicians always fear the stadium and its terrible power. They know that any dissatisfaction in the stadium can quickly spread to the street. They want to control it.”
He added that he didn’t know why the authorities had turned towards Mr. Belivuk however speculated that Mr. Belivuk and his followers had gone too far. “Everyone knew they were violent, that they beat people and made threats. But cutting off heads?”
Mr. Belivuk’s lawyer, Dejan Lazarevic, mentioned that his consumer had not but been formally charged and that there was no proof to help the accusations of homicide, kidnapping and different critical crimes made towards him by officers.
Mr. Vuletic, the professor, mentioned that Mr. Belivuk and a hoodlum often called “Sale the Mute,” who has since been killed, first took management of the south a part of Partizan’s stadium quickly after Mr. Vucic turned prime minister in 2014, and started beating up anybody chanting insults towards him.
Suspicions that Mr. Belivuk had highly effective buddies in the federal government, or not less than law-enforcement, have been rising since 2016, when he was arrested on homicide fees however then launched after DNA and different proof towards him both disappeared or needed to be discarded due to tampering.
Krik, the investigative reporting group, later printed pictures displaying a member of Serbia’s gendarmerie, a police pressure, attending soccer video games with Mr. Belivuk. At the time, the officer was in a relationship with a senior official chargeable for the Interior Ministry.
This partnership with the federal government, mentioned Mr. Dojcinovic, the Krik editor, broke down final 12 months for unknown causes, presumably due to an inside rift in Mr. Vucic’s governing Serbian Progressive Party, a few of whose members have been caught up in the investigation into Mr. Belivuk.
Among these taken in for questioning by the police in reference to the case is Slavisa Kozeka, the president of the Football Association of Serbia. Mr. Kozeka, a senior official in the governing get together, was earlier an activist in a far-right nationalist outfit that was led for years by a convicted battle prison.
All the unhealthy publicity has infuriated peaceful Partizan followers like Vladimir Trikic. Walking across the central Belgrade district of Dorcol, he confirmed off murals of artists, theater administrators and poets who’ve cheered on the membership. Partizan, although carefully tied to the previous Yugoslav Army, he mentioned, has “always been a team for intellectuals.”
For strange Partizan followers, Mr. Belivuk was by no means actually a supporter however an impostor despatched by Mr. Vucic to regulate and discredit his personal crew’s bitter rivals.
At a Partizan sport in Belgrade final week, held earlier than principally empty stands due to the pandemic, Zoran Krivokapic was one in all a handful of followers who managed to get into the stadium. He mentioned that he had attended each residence sport for 47 years and blamed the rise and fall of Mr. Belivuk on what he mentioned was a private vendetta towards Partizan by Mr. Vucic, the president.
“He wants to destroy Partizan and let Red Star rise,” he mentioned.
