One wedding in the 1990s showed what police-mafia cronyism looks like in the Balkans

Although Safet Kalić got married almost a quarter of a century ago, these days that event from the year 2000 has come into the public spotlight again, this time not because of the newlyweds, but because of the wedding party, more precisely one of the guests at the spectacle in Rožaj, Montenegro. Zoran Lazović, now arrested, and then a very powerful person in the Montenegrin security structures, was also on the list of guests.

Zoran Lazović has gone through all the security structures that have existed in Montenegro in recent decades, from the former army of the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army), through the police, the secret service, and all the way to the position of adviser to the long-term, and now former, President of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović. His connections with organized crime have been talked about for a long time, but these days, more precisely last week, those suspicions have been made concrete, so former security guard Lazović and former Special State Prosecutor of Montenegro Milivoje Katnić were arrested on suspicion of forming an organized criminal group and abusing their position. .

When the video of the wedding, with a title reminiscent of a folk song: “The Wedding of Safet Kalić”, appeared in the public and reached social networks, the biggest concern of the Montenegrin police at that moment was not who was present, but how the video got there. to the public. And the recording is spectacular, in every sense. Only the quality of the video, compared to the wedding of another hero of the nineties, Željko Ražnaotivić Arkan from his wedding with folk diva Svetlana Ražnatović, was a little worse, but for everything else, at least for the media and lovers of the nineties, both weddings are a real “treasure”.

Safet Kalić, known as Sajo from Rožaj, was quickly given the nickname “Balkan Pablo Escobar” by the media – he was arrested several times, convicted and released, linked to drug smuggling via the “Balkan route”. That he was powerful is shown by the footage from the wedding and the list of wedding guests, which in 2000 could have been called “Who’s Who in the Balkan Underworld”.

Of course, apart from the people from the underground, there were the inevitable policemen, members of the secret service and other security guards.

Kalić came to the wedding in a helicopter, a “gazelle” that landed on his helipad, and he was greeted, as customs dictate, with bursts from “Kalashnikovs” and “hecklers”. As far as is known, no one has ever been held accountable for a single bullet fired that day, and hundreds were fired. Allegedly, the police came to intervene, but they were sent back faster than they came, and their “honor” was saved by a few pistols, probably surplus, that the wedding guests handed over to them.

The delegation of the then Zemun clan, at the highest level, led by the leader Dušan Spasojević Duća, had the place of honor. By the way, the rumors were that Kalić was the main supplier of heroin to the Zemun clan, and the people of Zemun were the main distributors of that type of narcotics in Serbia. In 2003, Dušan Spasojević was killed in a confrontation with policemen who wanted to arrest him for the assassination of the then Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić.

At the same table sat another distinguished guest, later a blood enemy of Spasojević and the Zemun clan, who testified against them and contributed to their conviction. At that time, they were still on good terms, and that was Ljubiša Buha aka Čume, the most famous Serbian witness-collaborator and former leader of the Surčin clan from which the Zemun clan was born.

Among the guests was another name known throughout the Balkans, Nasser Kelmendi, allegedly one of the most important links in the supply of heroin to Western Europe and the Balkans and a close associate of many drug lords, regardless of religion or nationality.

Also present were some people who the general public will only hear about later, Kalić’s compatriots from the north of Montenegro, two brothers, Pljevljak, Darko and Duško Šarić. Back in 2000, no one had any idea that Darko Šarić would be declared one of the main dealers of another type of drug, cocaine, with which he flooded Western Europe.

Estimates of how many guests were correct range from a few thousand to the whole of Rožaj and a few thousand guests from the pride side.

Severina sang to them

The spectacle was magnified by the Croatian singer Severina Vučković, who sang Saja at the wedding for a huge sum of money, and she herself said on that occasion that it was her first time to come to Montenegro.

It is not known what the exact fee is, tens of thousands of marks at that time are mentioned.

But the amount of Severina’s fee, as well as the price of the wedding dress worn by the bride, have long since passed from reality to an organ legend, as well as the whole “Wedding of Safet Kalić”.

But the fact that the reality is much harsher and that in the Balkans it is difficult to distinguish a criminal from a security guard or a politician was perhaps best demonstrated by the wedding and the arrest of Zoran Lazović’s best man.

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