Savamala: Ristic Says Mali Ordered the Demolition
In an interview for Srbin.info, published the day before the election, Ristic describes the night of April 24-25, 2016. Milenijum Tim denies the claims, and Mali did not respond to N1.
Nikola Ristic, the former chief of Belgrade’s Municipal Police, has for the first time given a public, first-hand account of the overnight demolition in Savamala on April 24-25, 2016. In an interview for Srbin.info, published on October 24, the day before the snap parliamentary elections, he claims the demolition was ordered by then-mayor Sinisa Mali. The company Milenijum Tim, which Ristic mentions, denies all of his claims and says a criminal complaint has been filed against him for attempted extortion. Mali did not respond to N1’s inquiry, and the relevant authorities had not reacted by the time of publication.
What Ristic says about the call to the mayor’s office
Ristic says he has worn a uniform since 1998 and worked at the Savski Venac station from 2004. By his own account, he became head of the Municipal Police on the recommendation of Veselin Milic, later chief of the Belgrade Police Department. His contract was not extended in July 2018, after a little more than four years in the post.
He begins the story of the demolition with a call that, he says, came a few days earlier.
“The mayor, Sinisa, calls me to come to his office.”
He goes on to say that Mali was agitated and told him straight away what he wanted.
“He told me that a demolition had to be carried out in the Belgrade Waterfront zone.”
Ristic says Mali then sent him to the head of his cabinet, Luka Tomic. According to Ristic, Tomic told him the demolition would take place in certain parts of Savamala, at night, and that the then-prime minister’s cabinet had given the green light. Ristic says it struck him as suspicious right away that the job was not being done by day, like earlier demolitions, and that the only answer he got to that question was that it was “urgent.”
The night of the demolition: Senjak, Hercegovacka Street and masked men
Ristic says he spent that evening at a private celebration.
“That evening, I was at a restaurant in Senjak.”
There, he says, Milic told him what he had been informed of and what measures he had taken. “That was when I realized the scale of all this was much more serious than I had assumed,” Ristic said, and he decided to go to the scene.
By his description, the street was blocked by trucks and vehicles with no license plates and no markings, and this happened, as he recalls, a little before or a little after midnight. He says a patrol car with four officers arrived, and he told them to move on. Three vehicles with covered plates then reached the site, carrying, in his estimate, 12 to 15 masked men. When they tried to tie up the night watchman, he says, he forbade it.
Ristic says he found Ivan Bosnjak, co-owner of Milenijum Tim, at the scene, who, according to him, was there all night supervising the excavators. He also mentions a man from Sinisa Mali’s cabinet, probably an adviser, whose name he cannot remember. Of the machinery, he says:
“All of those machines at the scene, and all the workers operating them, were from Milenijum Tim.”
Asked by the host about the involvement of Veljko Belivuk’s crew, Ristic answered: “Those are all field workers, executors.” He added a rhetorical question: “Do you really think some criminal group, I don’t know which one, of whatever size, could devise something like this and carry it out this way?”
He describes his own role this way. He stayed at the scene until after three in the morning and watched the demolition the whole time.
“I chose the third option, even though I am aware that by doing so I became an accomplice.”
After the demolition, he says, he sent Mali a Viber message saying it was all over. He says Mali never replied, but that he saw the message. Ristic also states that in November 2023 he entered operational data into the Interior Ministry’s system, and that no prosecutor has ever called him in.
What Milenijum Tim says
In its response to N1, Milenijum Tim rejected all the claims.
“We sharply deny all of Nikola Ristic’s claims made in the interview for Srbin.info.”
The company said this covers the claims about the involvement of its machinery and workers, the presence of Ivan Bosnjak, and masked individuals in vehicles without license plates. It also says that over the past ten days or so Ristic tried to extort money from the company’s owner, that a criminal complaint was filed with the relevant authorities for this reason, and that it is cooperating with them fully. It gave no details: “Since the proceedings are ongoing, we are not able to provide additional information at this time.”
What was already known about Savamala
The demolition took place in Hercegovacka Street, where masked men used excavators to remove several buildings. The only person convicted in the case is police officer Goran Stamenkovic, who told KRIK in 2022 that the order for police not to go to the scene came from Veselin Milic. Mali’s former wife, Marija Mali, stated to KRIK in 2017 that he had boasted to her that he took part in the demolition, and that, as she put it, he did it to remove obstacles to the construction of a major project.
Ristic’s claims and the denial from Milenijum Tim, for now, stand against each other. Mali did not respond to N1’s inquiry, and the relevant authorities had not reacted by the time this article was published.
