BELGRADE: LUKOVIC'S SURRENDER USEFUL FOR ONGOING TRIALS, PROTECTED WITNESS STATUS IMPOSSIBLE

BELGRADE, May 3 (Hina) - The surrender of Milorad Lukovic aka Legija, the principal indictee in the murder of Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic on 12 March 2003, the murder of former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic in August 2000, and the attempted murder of Vuk Draskovic in Budva in June 2000, will be useful for the trials in question, an attorney for Djindjic's wife said on Monday, stressing that contrary to speculation Lukovic could not be given the status of a protected witness.#L# "His surrender is useful for those trials. What is questionable is why he has surrendered, with whom he negotiated his surrender and what he was promised. The persons negotiating with him could not have promised him much because Lukovic is the organiser (of a criminal act) and cannot be given the status of a protected witness," Danilovic said in a Radio B92 programme. Lukovic's surrender in front of his Belgrade home on Sunday evening has raised many questions. The head of the Committee of Human Rights Attorneys, Biljana Kovacevic Vuco, told Radio B92 that Lukovic's surrender was not coincidental because the trial of Djindjic's assassins had been accompanied from the start by a media campaign aimed at mixing up the executors and the victim. In this context, she quoted a statement by one of Lukovic's attorneys, Nenad Vukasovic, who said that "the question of the role of some people from the authorities and the Democratic Party will certainly be opened" to reveal "why Zoran Djindjic was actually murdered". "We will obtain much better information and there will be a lot of shocking turns of events in the continuation of the trial," Vukasovic said. A former Serbian vice-premier, Zarko Korac, said that Lukovic "has estimated that at this moment there is enough people in high places in Serbia who will, to say the least, have a lot of understanding for him". "If this proves true, we will be facing another political crisis," Korac said, recalling the stalling of the trial of Djindjic's assassins, the recent appearance in court of six members of the Serbian gendarmerie wearing T-shirts with the insignia of the disbanded special police units once commanded by Lukovic, and "the persistent attempts by one part of the public and the incumbent authorities to depict the unit and its former commander as true patriots". The spokeswoman for the Special Court for the Prevention of Organised Crime, Maja Kovacevic Tomic, said that Lukovic was the principal indictee in two trials that were under way, one involving another 13 people accused of Djindjic's assassination, which is due to resume on May 10, and the other concerning the murder of Ivan Stambolic and the attempted murder of Vuk Draskovic in Budva, which is scheduled to begin on May 18. (Hina) rml