Police arrest Chetnicks’ commander in Serbia

Printskrin/Youtube/Radio Slobodna Evropa

Serbia’s Police arrested Bratislav Zivkovic, known as the commander of the so-called Chetnicks' Movement, suspected of organising fighters for wars abroad, the Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported on Thursday.

The RFE said it the Interior Ministry (MUP) confirmed the arrest carried out as ordered by the Higher Prosecutors’ Office in Serbia’s central town of Krusevac, which suspected him of “committing a crime of organised participation in a war or an armed conflict in a foreign state.”

Zivkovic will spend 48 hours in custody before appearing before the respective prosecutors’ office, MUP’s statement to the RFE said.

The radio said that the General Prosecutors’ Office in Kiev investigates Zivkovic in connection with the six Serbia’s nationals who fought on the Russian side in the war in Ukraine.

Serbia’s citizens are suspected of attacks on Ukraine forces, as part of the extreme right organisation “Unité Continentale”, in the Donbas and Lugansk regions where Moscow-backed local Russians declared autonomy from Kiev.

The 2014 law on the participation of Serbia’s nationals on foreign battlefields envisages the penalty varying from six months to five years in jail, and if an individual takes part in a group abroad, the punishment is between one and eight years in prison.

The organisation of others for taking part in a war or an armed conflict, the jail term varies from two to ten years.

Last February, the RFE reported, Belgrade’s High Court convicted 28 Serbia’s nationals for warfare in Ukraine, and in 26 cases the defendants pleaded guilty. Four were sentenced to jail terms, while the rest received suspended sentences.

Chetniks were Serbia's elite royal armed unit in the First World War. Serbian nationalists in the 1991-1995 wars in former Yugoslavia called themselves the Chetnicks and were blamed for many atrocities committed in that period.