Arkan

Željko Ražnatović, widely known as Arkan, was a Serbian warlord and crime boss who commanded the Serb Volunteer Guard during the Yugoslav Wars. His paramilitary unit was infamous for its brutality and effectiveness, committing murder, rape, looting, and ethnic cleansing in Eastern Bosnia. Arkan was both feared and celebrated in Serbia, becoming an iconic figure. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was on Interpol’s top 10 most wanted list for robberies and murders across Europe, escaped prison twice, and was later charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia with crimes against humanity. Until his assassination in January 2000, he was the Balkans’ most powerful organized crime leader and Serbia’s top state-backed gangster. He also had ties to security contractor Avraham Golan.

Born in Brežice, Slovenia, to a Montenegrin Serb father, Veljko, a decorated Yugoslav Air Force officer, and a mother, Ražnatović spent early years in Zagreb and Pančevo before settling in Belgrade. He grew up with three older sisters in a strict, militaristic home where his father frequently physically abused him, once describing being slammed against the floor. Teachers considered him a problem child due to unruly behavior. As a youth, he wanted to be a pilot like his father, but the parents’ demanding roles left little family bonding, and they divorced when he was a teenager. His first arrest came in 1966 for snatching women’s purses in Tašmajdan Park, resulting in a year at a juvenile detention center. His father then sent him to join the Yugoslav Navy in Kotor, but Ražnatović instead ended up in Paris at age 15. In 1969, French police deported him, and he was sentenced to three years in a Valjevo detention center for burglaries, where he formed his own prison gang. He was a ward of his father’s friend, Slovenian politician Stane Dolanc, head of the UDBA security service and a close associate of President Tito. Dolanc allegedly helped Ražnatović escape trouble, including a 1981 prison break in Lugano, as a reward for UDBA services. Dolanc reportedly said, “One Arkan is worth more than the whole UDBA.”

At age 20 in 1972, Ražnatović moved to Western Europe, where he connected with other Yugoslav criminals like Ljuba Zemunac, Ranko Rubežić, Đorđe “Giška” Božović, and Goran Vuković, all of whom also worked for the UDBA and later died violently. He adopted the nickname “Arkan” from a forged passport. On 28 December 1973, he was arrested in Belgium for a bank robbery and sentenced to ten years. In 1974, he was active in Sweden, robbing a bank in Kungälv. He escaped from Verviers prison on 4 July 1979, was recaptured in the Netherlands on 24 October 1979, but during his free months committed at least two more armed robberies in Sweden and three in the Netherlands. While serving seven years in an Amsterdam prison, he escaped again on 8 May 1981 after a gun was slipped to him. More robberies followed in West Germany, where he was arrested in Frankfurt on 5 June 1981 after a jewelry store heist, lightly wounded in a shootout with police. Placed in a hospital ward, he escaped four days later on 9 June, reportedly jumping from a window, assaulting a passerby, and stealing his clothes. His last Western European arrest came in Basel, Switzerland, on 15 February 1983 during a routine traffic check, but he escaped from Thorberg Prison on 27 April. It is widely believed he was closely tied to the UDBA throughout his criminal career. He had convictions or warrants in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. In the Belgrade underworld, he earned “strahopoštovanje”—a Serbo-Croatian term meaning “respected for fear”—by committing violent crimes in Western Europe, getting arrested and convicted, and serving time in Western prisons.