A fugitive convicted of taking part in the assassination of Serbia's Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic seven years ago and several other murders has been extradited from Croatia, Serbia's police said Wednesday.
Sretko Kalinic was flown on a Serbian government plane from Zagreb to Belgrade early Wednesday amid tight security measures that included blocked traffic by heavily armed SWAT teams.
His extradition was made possible after Serbia and Croatia, wartime foes in the 1990s, recently signed an extradition treaty. Kalinic, 26, has a dual Serbian-Croatian citizenship.
Croatian police spokesman Krunoslav Borovec said Kalinic is the first Croatian citizen to be extradited to Serbia. The new extradition agreement is intended to stop numerous Balkan crime figures from evading justice by finding shelter in the neighboring countries.
Kalinic was sentenced in absentia to 30 years in prison with 10 other former gang members and paramilitaries for a planning role in the March 2003 assassination of Djindjic, Serbia's first democratically-elected prime minister who was killed by a sniper bullet in downtown Belgrade.
In 2008, Kalinic was separately sentenced to 40 years in prison for taking part in a series of mobster-style killings conducted by the so-called "Zemun clan" that operated from a Belgrade suburb in the 1990s and early 2000.
Kalinic, known in the underground circles as "the beast" for his brutality, was arrested in Croatia in June after a shootout near Zagreb with another convicted Djindjic's killer, Milos Simovic, who was caught soon after by Serbian border police while trying to flee Croatia.
Serbian police say Kalinic's specialty was dismembering bodies beyond recognition after gang-style killings.
Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said police hope that Kalinic's testimony could resolve several other murders believed committed by the clan.
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Associated Press writer Snjezana Vukic contributed to this report from Zagreb.
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