The Serbian government today accused allies of former President Mr Slobodan Milosevic of organising and carrying out the assassination of the prime minister.
Officials said a police investigation of the shooting of Zoran Djindjic showed that "a criminal clan, as well as some other groups, mainly police-security structures from Mr Milosevic's times . . . were involved in organising and carrying out" the murder.
They said that by yesterday afternoon, 56 suspects had been arrested, including eight members of an underworld gang implicated in the killing.
Three of the gang's members asked to be "protected witnesses" and said they agreed to testify against others in the group, the government said.
"Their testimony confirms the participation of this criminal clan" in Mr Djindjic's assassination, which happened on Wednesday infront of government headquarters in Belgrade.
Mr Djindjic (50) was instrumental in ousting Mr Milosevic and extraditing him to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
The police sweep - dubbed "Operation Whirlwind" - targeted members of the Zemun Clan, a shadowy crime network named after a Belgrade suburb, whose ranks included former paramilitaries loyal to Mr Milosevic.
Also detained yesterday were Mr Milosevic's former state security chief, Mr Jovica Stanisic, and his deputy, Mr Franko Simatovic, who headed notorious Serb paramilitary units in the Bosnian and Croatian wars of the early 1990s.
AFP