Serbia high court sentences Milosevic ex-security chief for assassination plot News
Serbia high court sentences Milosevic ex-security chief for assassination plot

[JURIST] Former Serbian chief of state security Radomir Markovic was sentenced to 40 years in prison Thursday for his role in a 1999 assassination attempt on then-Yugoslav opposition leader Vuk Draskovic [BBC profile]. The Supreme Court of Serbia also sentenced ten other individuals, including special police commander Milorad Ulemek [JURIST news archive], for orchestrating a highway crash intended to kill Draskovic. Draskovic survived and later went on to become the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Serbia-Montenegro. AP has more.

The high court tried Markovic after overturning numerous previous convictions related to the 1999 assassination attempt. In 2005, Markovic was among 10 former members of the Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] regime sentenced to jail [JURIST report] for the assassination plot. Markovic was sentenced to 10 years for covering up the plot. He was originally convicted in 2003 but that verdict was overturned on appeal.

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Guiteau tried for assassinating US President Garfield

On November 14, 1881, Charles Guiteau went on trial for the assassination of US President James A. Garfield. The trial of Guiteau pointed to problems with nineteenth-century law's treatment of insanity; Guiteau's trial is also problematic in retrospect as Garfield's death was immediately attributable not to Guiteau, but to Garfield's doctors who—before sterilization was well understood—repeated probed his wound with unwashed hands while searching for an embedded bullet.