THEY WILL NOT WORK IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR: About 40 experienced special forces members left SAJ, these are the reasons!

Since the arrival of Igor Žmirić at the head of the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit at the beginning of November last year, about 40 active members have left this once elite unit, N1 has learned.

These are mostly departures into disability or early retirement at personal request—officially. Unofficially, the main reason for the mass departure is the inability to work in the atmosphere of fear that has prevailed since Žmirić took office as the head of SAJ.

In addition, another ten active members have allegedly submitted requests for retirement, so in the coming period, if the requests receive a positive response, the unit will function with a significant shortage of professionally trained police members. An interesting fact is that the youngest retired person is only 36 years old.

Loss of experienced professionals

According to a now-retired member of SAJ, who wished to remain anonymous, only 70 people will remain in the operational composition, and for comparison—during last year and at the time while the unit was managed by Spasoje Vulević—there were more than 120. If it is known that the full combat composition is about 150 special forces members, it is clear how this outflow will reflect on the work of the unit.

This statistic supports the claims that the “special forces” are more ready to, as they tell N1, “leave honorably” than to accept working “under the command” of people who do not have adequate experience in the work of SAJ, and whom they suspect were brought to that position exclusively by loyalty to the political party in power, as well as to the president of Serbia.

However, as former members claim to N1, since Igor Žmirić took office, there have been no serious actions by the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit. On the contrary, they say they participated in actions that are not in their job description—such as the seizure of 12 kilograms of marijuana, as well as 180 stalks of this plant in mid-March in Subotica, when they were in the field together with members of the Criminal Police Directorate and the Police Directorate in Subotica.

They suspect that behind this lies Žmirić’s desire to prove himself loyal to those who appointed him, given that it is no secret that former commander Spasoje Vulević refused the request of the police and political leadership last summer for SAJ members to be on the streets of Belgrade during civil and student protests.

Another “novelty” introduced by Žmirić concerns the car he uses as an official vehicle since he has been managing SAJ—it is a Mercedes G-class BRABUS which, according to our interlocutors, he drives on weekends. This is the car that Aleksandar Vulin used to drive while he was the Vice President of the Government.

Neither freedom of opinion nor speech

N1’s interlocutors add that the work system in SAJ has not changed, but the general impression is that what is their job is being “taken over” by the Criminal Police Directorate, which has recently been headed by Marko Kričak. In addition, professional members are, they say, demotivated because loyalty to the new commander and his associates is required, but also because of the dismissals that have occurred since the personal changes at the head of the unit, about which N1 has already reported.

The dismissals, by the way, have continued, and besides them, transfers to the Unit for the Protection of Certain Persons and Objects (JZO), often due to suspicions that someone is speaking against the current leadership. All mentioned leads to a complete absence of freedom of speech and opinion, and these are values that, long-time members of SAJ remind, were normal in the unit while it was managed by Spasoje Vulević.

Everyone (had) wanted to be in SAJ

By the way, the public competition for attending the Selection Training for SAJ, as the competition for “entering” this unit is professionally called, lasted during last year while the commander of SAJ was Spasoje Vulević. At that time, a record number of applicants was recorded, about 400 of them. One of the reasons is that for the second time since the founding of SAJ, it was also open to civilians, and the other is that many members of the police from the regular composition and other units wanted to come to SAJ, which at that time was considered one of the few units under professional rather than political command.

In the last six months, this has changed, according to N1’s interlocutors who, for the same reasons, replaced their careers with retirement, which they actually—did not want.

This is, according to N1’s interlocutors, the most difficult period for SAJ in its 48 years of existence, and the fact that a third of the total composition left the unit in a short period directly endangers its operational power.

Let us remind you, the training of one SAJ member requires years of work and enormous state funds.

Whether it is a deliberate collapse of the efficiency and basic purpose of the only special unit of this kind within the MUP—was one of the questions that the N1 editorial office sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In addition, we asked if the claims made in this text are correct, but the MUP did not respond to us by the time of publication.