Serb Volunteer Guard
(Serb Volunteer Guard)
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The Serb Volunteer Guard - SDG (Serbian: Српска добровољачка гарда/Srpska dobrovoljačka garda) was a volunteer paramilitary unit founded and led by Željko Ražnatović, widely known as Arkan, during the Yugoslav wars.
The unit members, nicknamed The Tigers or Arkan's Tigers (Serbian: Арканови Тигрови, Arkanovi Tigrovi), fought in Croatia (1991-1992) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995).
History and organisation
The Guard was created on October 11, 1990 by 20 volunteers, mainly fans of the FK Red Star Belgrade football club. Reportedly at some points the Guard had over 10,000 fighters; other reports claim that the number of the armed fighters never exceeded several hundreds.
The Guard's headquarters and training camp was in Erdut, Eastern Slavonia (until 1995 part of the separatist Republic of Serbian Krajina). The Guard was responsible to the command of the Territorial Defense, a regular military in charge of the rebel territories of Croatia populated predominantly by Serbs during the first half of the 1990s.
Serb Volunteer Guard was officially disbanded in April of 1996. Besides Arkan, a very notable member was colonel Nebojsa 'Suca' Djordjevic, brutally murdered by rival colonel Milorad 'Legija' Ulemek in late 1996.
Members of the Guard were also ordered by Arkan to join the Yugoslav army and police forces in the fight against the Albanian rebels in Kosovo since the summer of 1998.
War crimes allegations
Arkan was indicted in 1997 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for his commandment of the Guard as the unit was allegedly responsible for numerous crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and violations of the laws or customs of war, including active participation in the ethnic cleansing of Bijeljina and Zvornik in 1992. The ICTY indictment also lists around seventy Bosniak men allegedly killed by the Guard under Arkan in and near Sanski Most in September 1995.
Famous members
- Borislav Pelević - Serbian presidential candidate[citation needed]
See also
External links
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