Several Serbian media outlets have recently promoted a conspiracy theory – the counterintelligence services of the Balkan countries, in a car dealership in Skopje, are preparing to assassinate Serbian oppositionists. Afterwards, the β€œWest” would blame these crimes on Vučić’s government.

The Serbian weekly newspaper ”Pečatβ€œ in the issue released on 19 July 2019, published a text entitled: β€œNoose for Serbia” (original: β€žΠžΠΌΡ‡Π° Π·Π° Π‘Ρ€Π±ΠΈΡ˜Ρƒβ€œ). The text is about the alleged β€œspecial war that NATO’s leading countries are waging against Serbia”, and the focus is on the β€œnew secret operation – Noose, which has an elaborate plan for Serbia’s ruin”.

Afterwards, the text was published by several other media outlets such asΒ β€œNovi Standardβ€œ, and Β β€œVečernje Novostiβ€œ,Β  a state-owned newspaper whose editor-in-chief Milan VučeliΔ‡ is the owner of β€œPečat”.

The conspiracy theory predicts assassinations of opposition leaders in Serbia

Author of the text is Ljuban Karan, a 66-year-old retired KOSΒ  (Counterintelligence service of the ex-Yugoslav People’s Army) colonel who had analyzed the possible scenarios for the demise of Serbia’s president Aleksandar VučiΔ‡. In his analysis of the special military methods against Serbia, Karan warns of the possible political assassinations aimed at opposition members, for which the government will be blamed.

β€œIf we ask ourselves who could be the target, it is only logical for it to be one of the opposition leaders, maybe even someone who is controlled by the West. From the point of view of waging a special war, it would be most effective to remove someone who is attacking the current government most vigorously. Someone who would be more useful dead, as a β€œpolitical victim of the regime”, than as an unsuccessful opposition figure without people’s support. Those who are engaged in the dirty games together with the Western counterintelligence services are not even aware of the danger that they may suffer from the dirty machinery for which they work hard and believe to have use from…” writes Karan in the controversial text.

At a special press conference the leaders of the opposition party “Alliance for Serbiaβ€œ (Savez za Srbiju) expressed concern that this is a threat against them and demanded an investigation of these allegations by the prosecution. They particularly emphasized the fact that “Vecernje Novosti” is a state-owned media outlet, and also stated they have information that they had been monitored and wiretapped through a special department of the Serbian Ministry of Interior, active since September 2018.

Car dealership as a center of world conspiracy against Serbia

Interestingly enough, Karan states that in this synchronized β€œWestern powers plot” against Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia participate. He claims that under the influence of the CIA, a group that operates from a car dealership in Skopje has been formed?!

β€œTwo months ago, the Bulgarian counterintelligence service became part of the joint special operation against Serbia, that is, roughly in the same period that the operation β€œNoose” was launched. Their operatives are working together with the counterintelligence agents from Macedonia, Albania and Germany from Skopje, a group most likely formed by the CIA, camouflaged as a car dealership,” Karan writes.

However, this conspiracy scenario seems, at any rate, strange. Karan himself does not point to precise sources, even unofficial ones. Nor does he point to the β€œholders of the secret information”.Β  Answering a direct question posed by the weekly newspaper β€žVremeβ€œ (no. 1491), he calls upon β€œinformation published in the media” that he interpreted with β€œexpertize”. However, he does not specify the information or the media on which he relies on.

Truth be told, the Macedonian public is not aware that there is a car dealership in Skopje where a special war against Serbia is being waged. Such information so far (6 August 2019) has not been published in any Macedonian media outlet, even as a speculation.

If such a β€œcamouflaged car dealership” existed in Skopje, it is unlikely that it would have remained undiscovered and that no such information would have β€œleaked” into the public. In particular, this would not have gone unnoticed by the media critical of the current governing structure.

So far there is no evidence, even from anonymous sources, that would confirm such allegations made in the text published in the Serbian weekly newspaper β€œPečat”, which makes this media outlet somewhat unreliable. As for the retired KOS colonel Karan, his anti-NATOβ€―positionsβ€―are well known to the Serbian public. For β€œVreme” he stated that he did not want to convey a death threat to the opposition, but merely to β€œwarn” that a special war is being waged against Serbia aimed at forcing the country to get closer to NATO and separate it from the Russian Federation.

According to Slobodan Georgijev, a journalist at β€œVreme” and author of the interview with Karan, precisely these texts are indicators that β€œSerbia is in some kind of special war, but it is a war that the regime is waging against everyone who thinks, speaks and works differently from VučiΔ‡ and his team”. According to him, in that war, the media plays perhaps the leading role. β€œFake news, fake media, fake journalists, fake analysts – they have flooded the Serbian media space,” concludes Georgijev.

In the previous period, the term “noose” was used by a series of Belgrade tabloid known for publishing misinformation about world conspiracies against Serbia, such as “Informer” or “Srpski Telegraf”. In such articles, and before Karan’s article was published, they often wrote that the “noose around Vučić’s neck is tightening”.

Earlier, such claims were made on RTS, the national broadcasting channel,Β by Serbian Progressive Party MP Milovan Drecun, who commented the case when Russian pranksters released recorded phone conversations with Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev.