Killer, DJ: Who is Srdan Golubovic?

Thirty years have passed since the death squad of Arkan's Tigers massacred civilians in Bosnia. Almost none of the war criminals belonging to the gang were prosecuted. Rolling Stone magazine documented that one of them had been DJing at music festivals and nightclubs across Europe for decades. Some of them roam the same streets with the families of the victims today.

Arkan started by putting young men under his command. The tribunes were a good address for him to gather the war. In 1990, two years before the war, he founded a group of fanatical supporters of Belgrade's Red Star football team known as the "Ultras".

He made his name known for the first time in today's tensions in Croatia. The gang affiliated with Arkan raided the city of Biyelyina in the northeast of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the United Nations tribunal set up to prosecute the events during the Bosnian War, it killed at least 48 people in two days, most of them executions. According to some claims, the death toll is much higher. The killings started a four-year cycle of war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Bosnia. In total, more than 100,000 people died and 2 million were displaced.

A day with the murderers

At that time, Ron Haviv, a young photographer from the USA, was working as a reporter in the region. He knew Arkan from Croatia. Using this relationship, he watched Arkan Tigers for a day on April 2, 1992. One of the photographs he took that day became a symbol of the war: a young militia with a cigarette in one hand, sunglasses on his head, a rocket launcher on his back, and an invisible face, kicking a woman named Tifa Šabanović, one of the victims of the massacre, lying on the ground. Other victims, Abdirami and his wife, Hamijeta, were also lying next to Tifa. Meanwhile, two uniformed and armed men were passing by.

Arkan himself later took Haviv's films, but the photographer managed to hide the reel with this frame. Time magazine published a photo story about the Biyelina massacre two weeks later. The world learned about the ongoing massacre from this news. However, the people in this photo were never prosecuted. Most of the members of the Tigers of Arkan gang are free.

From war to stage

At the end of 1995, the war in Bosnia ended. During these years, an "underground rave" culture was developing in Belgrade. Dance became a way for urban youth to escape from the overwhelming reality of everyday life. Everyone was listening to the Serbian radio B92. Young people also associated electronic music with anti-war in those years. One of the promising young people on the dance floor was Srđan Golubović.

It was not well known in Belgrade that Golubović was once a member of the Arkan gang, but local media and the public claimed that he was the one who kicked Tifa Šabanović while he was lying on the ground. When they went to Bosnia, the gang members were called Golubović Max. He became famous in Belgrade parties with the name "Captain Max". He rarely plays at parties today.

Rolling Stone magazine reviewed many of the photos Haviv took on April 2, 1992. In one of these photos, today's DJ is talking to two women in a hospital. In another, he's on patrol with the Tigers of Arkan. He's sitting on a blue Suzuki motorcycle in a first-time Rolling Stone photo. Haviv says this photo was taken on the same day as the massacre. The venues are 200 meters away from the kick photo.

Golubović refused to respond to allegations that he played a role in the mass killings in Bijeljina. Rolling Stone sent him two photos taken by Haviv. Golubović on Viber, “I don't let my name or photo appear in your story. "I talked to my lawyer, it is illegal to publish false information about someone," he said.

There are payrolls

The magazine also found payrolls showing that Golubović received salaries from the Serbian Security Forces in September 1994 and in January, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and December 1995. There is no official document that he was in Bosnia in 1992. However, there are witnesses who say that he was with the Arkan gang from day one.

• Note: You may come across an award-winning Serbian director by the name of Srdan Golubović in internet searches. The situation consists of name similarity.