Don't look now (nobody else is) but it looks like they really caught the guy who killed Zoran Djindjic.

While doing research for this story for Slate on Zoran Djindjic's assassination, I found some excellent English-language resources for Balkan news. Local Belgrade sources include Blic, independent radio station B92, and shortwave Radio Jugoslavija.

But far and away the best coverage of the Balkans comes from the Institute for War and Peace reporting. They have a daily update on Serbia developments here. Sifting through recent archives, I found some fascinating (and shocking, even for Serbia) stuff, such as the fact that the guy who tried to kill Djindjic in February prior to his actual assassination had in fact been arrested and then let go by the judges. Djindjic, who had only just taken hold of real power from ex-Yugo Pres. Kosturica, was understandably outraged, calling the Milosevic-era judiciary corrupt and promising reform. The judges accused him of trying to curtail their independence and blamed the police for providing insufficient evidence to keep the accused in jail. The police complained that new a law giving them only 48 hours to provide evidence on an arrested suspect doesn't give them enough time. Apparently, this was not a one-off mistake, but part of a larger pattern. This article, written just over a week before Djindjic's murder probably gives the best backgrounder on the unholy mess that allowed this to happen.

Word on the street in Belgade is that the killing of Djindjic, though recognized almost universally as a tragedy, may actually help the country, since it gives the government an excuse to use all legal and many illegal means to crack down on the nexus of organized crime/ex-war criminals/Milosevic-era state security apparatus. That's anecdotal, but it's backed up by this report saying " the assassination of Zoran Djindjic could presage the end of organised crime in Serbia."

As a resident of a small country, relatively nearby, filled with liberal, educated people, but so often plagued by insularism, provicialism and cronyism, where so many unprincipled politicians and local power players seem not even to acknowledge the existence of a larger world beyond their borders, I was particularly saddened and outraged by Djindjic's assassination. Really, it's amazing: Did they actually think they could just rub out the prime minister as though he were a nuisance impeding on their turf, without there being hell to pay? Imagine if Vaclav Klaus or Vladimir Zelezny had no compunction about eliminating a political opponent with two sniper's bullets: That's Serbia for you.