Special Police Units (Serbia)

The Special Police Units or Police Special Units (Serbian: Posebne jedinice policije, PJP) was a special police force unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia (MUP).[1] It had several detachments and was part of the sector of the State Security Service.[2] It was disbanded on Vidovdan in 2001 when it was replaced by the re-establishment of the Gendarmery.[3]

Special Police Units
Posebne jedinice policije
AbbreviationPJP
Agency overview
Formed1994 (1994)
Dissolved28 June 2001 (2001-06-28)
Superseding agencyGendarmery
Employees5,000 (1999)
Jurisdictional structure
Operations jurisdictionSerbia
Governing bodyMinistry of Internal Affairs (Serbia)
HeadquartersBelgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Užice, Niš and Priština
Agency executive
  • Obrad Stevanović, Commander

Between 1994 and 1996 it was commanded by Obrad Stevanović.[4] During the Kosovo War (1998–99), the force had an estimated 5,000[5][6] or 7,000 men.[6] The PJP detachments were based at Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Užice, Niš and Priština.[5] It is believed that it was commanded by Obrad Stevanović, now the head of police.[6] Its elite unit was the "Lightning" (Munje) unit, according to M. McAllester partly made up of "some of Yugoslavia's most dangerous criminals".[7] Among other special units active in the war was the Special Anti-Terrorist Unit (SAJ), a separate part of the MUP.[8]

See also

References
  1. Gow 2003, p. 86, HRW 2001, p. 330
  2. McAllester 2003, p. 29.
  3. Vreme 2009.
  4. Tromp 2016, p. 132.
  5. Gow 2003, p. 86.
  6. HRW 2001, p. 78.
  7. McAllester 2003, p. 30.
  8. Gow 2003, p. 86, HRW 2001, p. 78

Sources
  • Gow, James (2003). The Serbian Project and Its Adversaries: A Strategy of War Crimes. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. pp. 86–87. ISBN 978-1-85065-499-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • McAllester, Matthew (2003). Beyond the Mountains of the Damned: The War Inside Kosovo. NYU Press. pp. 29–30. ISBN 978-0-8147-5661-4.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Tromp, Nevenka (2016). Prosecuting Slobodan Milošević: The Unfinished Trial. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-33527-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Under Orders: War Crimes in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch. 2001. pp. 77–78, 330. ISBN 978-1-56432-264-7.
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