“Paramilitary camps are a constant in Serbia”: BIA and the police had to react after information from abroad
In just three days at the end of September, several members of two organized groups were arrested in Serbia, who were trained in paramilitary camps in our country to act to destabilize the situation in Moldova, France and Germany. Officials in these countries state that there are reasonable suspicions that the Russian security services are behind everything. Predrag Petrović, director of research at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, says that such training centers are a constant in Serbia, and that the arrests have now occurred because the BIA and the Serbian police were pressured by information and evidence “served” to them from abroad.
On Sunday, September 26, the Ministry of the Interior announced that members of the MUP, in cooperation with the BIA and the competent prosecutor’s offices, arrested L.P. (37) and S.S. (47) suspected of having organized combat-tactical training for citizens of Moldova and Romania, which, it is suspected, aimed at training them to provide more effective physical resistance to Moldovan police officers in the event of riots during election day, September 28, in that country.
Three days after this arrest, on Wednesday, September 29, another one followed. Then the BIA, in a joint operation with the Police Administration in Smederevo, arrested a group in Velika Plana, which, as it is suspected, was organized and trained by M.G. on the territory of Serbia, for committing crimes of racial and other discrimination and espionage on the territory of Germany and France.
Predrag Petrović, director of research at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, told the N1 portal that such training centers and paramilitary training camps are a constant in Serbia.
“The fact is that both of them were trained in Serbia, that it must have lasted for some time and that there were such camps here before, but also in the Republic of Srpska. We had a case where a foreign citizen ran a training center for similar trainings – Radar journalists established this in Niš, when they discovered that a former member of special forces and a citizen of Uzbekistan was from a camp organized by the European Association of Bodyguards and Workers in the Security Sector (EBSSA),” he explains.
Although news about paramilitary camps appeared sporadically in the domestic media, about people who were trained in Serbia in order to operate in an organized manner on the territories of other countries, undermining their arrangements, the domestic public could first hear from foreign officials.
Thus, the police, the prosecutor’s office and the intelligence services of Moldova announced the first details of an extensive operation aimed at breaking up the group, whose goal was to operate during and immediately after the Moldovan parliamentary elections. Apart from the fact that members of this group “systematically attended courses in military camps in Serbia”, officials in Moldova also pointed out that “the training was coordinated by Russian special services, including the General Directorate of Military Intelligence, known by the acronym GRU”. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia, on the other hand, did not mention Russia and its intelligence services in its announcement about the arrest.
In no other case, when the BIA arrested a group that threw green paint on the Holocaust museum, several synagogues and a Jewish restaurant, stuck stickers with “genocidal” content, placed pig’s heads near Muslim religious buildings, all in the Paris area, as well as in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not mention Russia, but stated in a statement that it is suspected that the organizer of the group acted on the instructions of a foreign intelligence service.
Doubts that Russian intelligence is playing a role in this case as well, two days before the Serbian MUP informed the public about the arrest, French Le Monde published a news article entitled “French investigators believe that Russia is involved in throwing pig heads at mosques.”
“The investigation has strengthened suspicions about the involvement of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. That hypothesis is additionally confirmed by intelligence data exchanged through cooperation between France and allied countries,” the paper states, among other things.
“Serbia is a safe house for Russian and also Chinese agents”
Predrag Petrović explains to N1 that in the last few years the ties between Serbia and Russia have been strengthened, and that the last two discovered cases of paramilitary organization in Serbia, as well as the previous escape of two Chinese spies from house arrest, indicate that Serbia has become a safe house for Russian and Chinese agents.
“That’s why a joint working group was formed with Russia to fight color revolutions. That’s why we have that the Serbian security service persecuted Russians who are against Putin’s regime on the one hand, but on the other hand we also have that the Serbian authorities granted Serbian citizenship in an extraordinary procedure to 200 citizens of Ukraine and Russia who are connected to the Russian security apparatus. We also have an intensive spread of pro-Russian propaganda through pro-government media, so that pro-Russian reporting is much more emotional than what the Russians do media in Serbia. So we have a strengthening, I would say, of Serbia’s pro-Russian anti-Western restraint through these specific instruments of cooperation, but also the creation of an anti-Western orientation among the citizens of Serbia,” says Petrović.
The fact that, despite the increasingly strong cooperation between Serbia and Russia, when it comes to the security services, the arrests still occurred, according to Petrović, is the result of pressure, although, as he says, it cannot be ruled out that it also occurred as an attempt to repair the damage that had been caused.
“So, it is about the fact that the Serbian security services, primarily the BIA and the police, react in such situations only when they have to, when they are pressed by information and evidence that someone else ‘serves up’. This is quite clear in the case of Moldova, because it was very important for both it and the Western countries to prevent the destabilization of Moldova before or after the elections. And that is why they reacted like this and simply the Security Information Agency and the police had no other way out than to make those arrests. of this second case, it is similar to this first one. On September 10, eyewitnesses saw some people getting out of them and leaving pigs’ heads in front of the mosque. So, the French authorities had information that people from Serbia were involved in that case, and they probably passed that information on to the Serbian security forces, which then had to react. However, the fact that the reaction came immediately after the Moldovan case, we can conclude that it happened and as an attempt to rehabilitate the damage that occurred by disclosing this military training camp for para-police or para-security forces,” he states.
When it comes to the epilogue of these arrests, Petrović points out that it will depend on political will and that the most certain scenario is that it will not go the way it should go in normal democratic states.
“Of course, a lot depends on how the prosecution formulates the indictment, because the outcome of the entire proceedings largely depends on how the indictment is formulated. If the criminal acts for which they will be charged are poorly characterized, then the whole case can either fall in court or they can get away with light sentences. Given that we know that our judiciary is under a strong political cap, the outcome will depend on the political will. It is therefore not excluded that these people will be used later also for some favors to the ruling party, because that’s how the whole system here works – that people who have some criminal deeds behind them, that they are very useful for carrying out certain tasks for the current regime. Again, it depends on the Russian side how much they will insist that it all goes without some serious outcome in terms of criminal-legal proceedings”, explains the interlocutor N1.
How will the government calm down the West?
He adds that support for the current regime is very important for staying in power and that instead of that, they will make decisions about what is profitable for them.
“They will probably try to appease the West by giving some new concessions and concessions, either by promising ammunition for Ukraine or whatever they can offer. The most certain scenario is that it will not go the way it should go in some normal democratic states, that is, with a court epilogue where those people who were involved in paramilitary training would be punished by court, probably due to Russia’s insistence and pressure, but on the other hand, the authorities in Belgrade will offer something to the Western countries in order to reconciled them,” concludes Petrović.