YUGOSLAVIA: FUNERAL OF ZIVORAD 'ZIKA' PETROVIC DIRECTOR GENERAL OF YUGOSLAV AIRLINES

Record ID: 863743

  • Title: YUGOSLAVIA: FUNERAL OF ZIVORAD 'ZIKA' PETROVIC DIRECTOR GENERAL OF YUGOSLAV AIRLINES
  • Date: 27th April 2000
  • Summary: CU FLASHING LIGHT OF EMERGENCY VEHICLE LV INVESTIGATORS LIFTING BODY BAG CONTAINING PETROVIC'S BODY ONTO STRETCHER SLV INVESTIGATORS PUTTING BODY BAG CONTAINING PETROVIC'S BODY INTO AN AMBULANCE
  • Embargoed: 12th May 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: POZAREVAC, YUGOSLAVIA
  • City:
  • Country: Serbia
  • Topics: Crime
  • Reuters ID: LVADQV425SKLUTK3FTPTDKP7VWN6
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: The General-Director of Yugoslav airlines, Zivorad "Zika" Petrovic, has been buried in his home town of Pozarevac, some 80 kilometres south of Belgrade.Senior Yugoslav government officials joined family members for the funeral of Petrovic, who was gunned down on a Belgrade street two days ago.
    The mood was sombre as people gathered for Petrovic's funeral at the cemetery in his home town of Pozarevac on Thursday (April 27).
    Yugoslav and Serbian government officials attended the funeral, including Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic.Many JAT employees also attended the burial at the Pozarevac cemetery.
    Petrovac's wife Duca, his mother and his daughter Jelena and son, Dejan, appeared to find it difficult to contain their emotions at the graveside.
    Petrovic, JAT managing director since 1992 and a loyal ally of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, was shot dead by unknown assassins in central Belgrade on Tuesday (April 25) evening.
    Nobody has claimed responsibility for the latest in a series of high-profile unsolved killings in the capital.
    The shooting was similar to other gangland-style murders of top officials, policemen and underworld figures in the years since the bloody break-up of old socialist Yugoslavia.
    This year alone, Yugoslav Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic was gunned down in a Belgrade restaurant in February and notorious paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, Arkan, was shot dead in a hotel lobby a month earlier.
    Yet, people who worked with Petrovic were amazed he could have been the object of such an apparently well-planned murder, saying there had been no rumours of political or business conflicts.
    Born in 1939, Petrovic trained as an engineer and joined Jugoslovenski aerotransport (JAT) in 1968.
    Director of JAT for eight years, Petrovic had recently got a boost from the decision by the European Union to lift an air embargo imposed against Yugoslavia last year over Milosevic's repression of Albanians in Kosovo.
    In 1998, JAT reached a 500 million deal with European aircraft consortium AIRBUS to purchase eight Airbus 319s to renew its fleet over a 12-year period, with initial deliveries first scheduled for mid-2000 and then postponed until 2001.
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