May 07, 2004
The Legionnaire, cont'd
Five days after surrendering to police, Legija (it's pronounced Leggy-uh, by the way) is still in captivity.
And that's all we know. The news blackout continues.
To paraphrase Dragan Antulov (of Draxblog), the optimists are just glad that Legija is off the street, and hope that he can offer useful information -- more about the ugly nexus of politics and organized crime in Serbia, more about the Djindjic assassination, maybe even something about the whereabouts of much-wanted war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
The pessimists think that Legija's surrender is just the tip of the iceberg. That he had help to stay undercover for fourteen months -- maybe official help. That as an intelligent paramilitary-counterintelligence-antiterrorist-organized crime figure, he'd never have given up without some good reason. They think he surrendered because he cut a deal with Kostunica's government; and that he'll be kept sequestered and and put back into play only when it suits the government (i.e., when he has some particularly damning piece of information about the previous administration, or perhaps some political rival).
"We do know that Legija is not to be believed, that he has outmanoeuvred many people who thought they were a jump ahead of him, and that he has buried many who believed they were better than him," said a former police minister.
Short answer is, we don't know. More on this when there's more to tell.
Posted by douglas at May 7, 2004 03:26 PM