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Former Milosevic Defense Lawyer Killed in Belgrade


Advisor to Slobodan Milosevic, Dragoslav Ognjanovic is surrounded by the media during a break on the trial against Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, February 13, 2002.
Advisor to Slobodan Milosevic, Dragoslav Ognjanovic is surrounded by the media during a break on the trial against Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague, February 13, 2002.

A prominent Belgrade lawyer who in the past helped to defend late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was shot dead, gangland-style, in front of his home on Saturday, police said.

Dragoslav Ognjanovic, 57, was gunned down in front of his apartment building in the Novi Beograd neighborhood and his 26-year-old son was wounded in the right arm, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

As a prominent criminal lawyer, Ognjanovic served in the early 2000s on a legal team that helped to defend Milosevic at his war crimes trial before the U.N. tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Milosevic died in the tribunal’s detention unit in 2006 before a verdict was reached.

Over the years, Ognjanovic also defended some of Serbia’s leading underworld figures.

Several prominent members of Serbian and Montenegrin organized crime networks have been killed in Belgrade in the past two years in what police describe as a turf war over the illegal drugs market.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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