Montenegro hunts gunman after Niksic clan killing
Jovan Mrvaljevic was shot dead on Saturday evening in the Kapino polje district of Niksic. Police say he belonged to an organized criminal group, and the attacker is still unidentified.
The Montenegrin Police Directorate has confirmed that Jovan Mrvaljevic was shot dead in Niksic on Saturday evening, a man whose name had surfaced in several investigations into the war between two Montenegrin clans since late 2020. The shooting took place on August 1, 2026, at around 8 p.m., in the Kapino polje district on the edge of town. The gunman fled and has not been identified.
The police statement refers to the victim only by the initials J. M. from Niksic. It says a firearm was used against him and that he was a member of an organized criminal group. Officers sealed off the entire district and secured the scene.
What the police said
The Police Directorate published its statement the same evening, giving the time and place of the shooting:
The firearm was used at around 8 p.m. in the Kapino polje district of Niksic.
The same statement set out what comes next:
Officers of the Police Directorate, in cooperation with the competent prosecutor, are taking every measure and action aimed at establishing all the circumstances and fully clarifying the event.
The case is being handled by officers of the Western Regional Security Centre, working with a state prosecutor from the Podgorica Higher State Prosecutor’s Office. Reported figures for the victim’s age differ between outlets, so no age is given here.
Who was Jovan Mrvaljevic?
To the police he was a member of an organized criminal group. Montenegrin and Serbian media had for years described him as a senior figure in the Skaljari clan. On the available record, none of the accusations that followed him ended in a final conviction.
His name is attached to three separate cases, all within roughly a year:
- a detention in Niksic in late December 2020, after which he filed a complaint against two officers
- a suspicion, in early 2021, that he was part of a group that tried to kill two leaders of a Belgrade clan in Tivat
- an arrest in November 2021 on suspicion that he belonged to a group planning to kill Slobodan Kascelan, one of the leaders of the Kavac clan
Why this matters in Serbia
Because of the Tivat file. In early 2021, Mrvaljevic was suspected of belonging to the group that tried to kill Veljko Belivuk and Marko Miljkovic while both were still at large. That thread carries the Niksic killing across the border and straight into a case Serbian courts and readers have been following for five years.
It also explains why Montenegrin police shut down the district within minutes. The killing of a senior clan figure in another town’s back yard rarely stays a single incident.
A verdict on July 8, a shooting on August 1
Mrvaljevic claimed that on the night between December 30 and 31, 2020, after being taken into custody, he was tortured and abused by officers Petar Lazovic and Jugoslav Raicevic, including choking and threats. The proceedings ran for years.
In a verdict handed down on July 8, 2026, the two officers were acquitted. The court found no injuries on the basis of footage from the Niksic Security Centre and from police premises.
Twenty four days passed between that verdict and the shooting at Kapino polje. No official document links the two events, and police have released no motive. The sequence is still hard to ignore: a man who lost his case against the state in July was shot in the street in August.
What happens next
The investigation is at the pre indictment stage. Prosecutors in Podgorica have yet to order an autopsy and forensic analysis of the scene, and police are searching for the attacker without a published description and without vehicle details.
Until the first official word on motive, the only established fact is the one the Police Directorate has already given: the victim belonged to an organized criminal group. Everything else, for now, is unconfirmed.
