Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
new documentary uncovers how a Serbian crime gang used encrypted Sky phones to plan murders, share gruesome photos, and operate with protection from high-ranking officials.
In Serbia, a group of violent criminals tortured their enemies inside a house of horrors known as “The Slaughterhouse.” Unbelievably, they documented all of their crimes in photos and videos, and shared them with each other on encrypted phones. Even more unbelievable: They appear to have had the backing of some of the top officials in the Serbian government.
it looks like a simple house in a rural suburb outside of belgrade, the capital of serbianothing looks out of order, from the outside.
but in 2021 , when police searched it they found a secret door in the garage
leading to a hidden room
and in this room, they found an industrial meat grinder
but this meat grinder wasn’t used for animals
it was used by a criminal group to grind human beings, they tortured victims , often decapitated them , extracted the organs,cut them into small pieces, and then put the flesh through the grinder.
they bagged the remains, and carried them to the nearby river
where they dumped them in the water.
how do we know this ?
because the criminal group took pictures of the process
and then they sent these pictures to their friends to brag.
and sometimes they also sent he pictures to their enemies to taunt and warn them .
they documented this process all on highly specialized ,encrypted phones that they thought were secure, they never thought the pohone’s encryption could be cracked ,but it was.
and no one thought this whole brutal mess would connect to serbian law enforcement
and officials. but again but again ,it did.
i’m going to walk you through this whole bizarre story – the supposedly uncrackable ,highly encrypted phones were ,in fact ,cracked
and here’s how it happened
most people are familiar with mobile apps like messenger, whatsApp , telegram and signal , this are the most popular services that offer encryption
they’re all thought to be secure to some extent, meaning authorities are not known to be able to break the encryption and read the messages
but this group was using modified phones and software made bay a company in cananda called sky global, they were advertised as some form of ultimate security an addition to strong encryptionthey had features like self-destructing messages
and the ability to wipe the phone remotely
2019
european authorities started a cross border investigation because they suspected that these phones were being almost exclusively used by criminals.
the authorities disvoered the backup servers were in france.
and in 2020, a specialized encryption unit is able to crack the group messages feature of these sky phones , so now authortities are able to secretly read over 2 million messages.
and this is about the same time that the gruesome murders int the serbian homes start taking place.
we can deduce that european authorities decrypted these extremely gruesome photos , grew extremely concerned and decides to share these photos with serbian authorities
and once serbian authorities get this information ,they’re able to determine that one of the suspects is actually quite famous.
his name is veljko belivuk and this is his story, veljko belivuk, who we’ll just call belivuk, is the leader of a serbian group called the principi
in the region, criminal groups get very complicated, so for the purposes of this story , you just need to rembember two of them: the f Kavač clan and the Škaljari clan and they are at war with each other .
now belivuk’s group principi, which roughly translates into ” princiled”, is allied with the Kavač
his clan is mostly street level muscle and enforcers made up of football hooligans supporting serbia’s partizan footoball team .
when i say football hooligans you might not take it too seriously, but in the balkans it’s very serious business, with a lot of history and nationalism.
and the stadium has always been a firm recruiting ground for organized crime groups.
so belivuk’s group is at war.
the two groups are assassinated each other wih car bombs
snipers , you name it.
they are killing and being killed but these sorts of murders left bodies….
so belivuk’s group developed a motto:”no body , no crime.”
and a unique place to realixe it for their enemies , they called it “the slaughterhouse “
our understanding of what happened is from the testimony of threw crew members turned witnesses , the indictment, and the sky messages exchanged as the crew went about planning these murders.
at the same time , it’s very important for me to say that the trial is ongoing. no one has been convicted , and the accused deny the charges.
this wad the first victim of the slaughterhouse , he was actually belivuk’s friend and a member of the group but belivuk got the idea that he was a traitor.
belivuk had a clear message
from the day of the murder we have CCTV stills from the home prior to the victim’s arrival
this is belivuk himself
then the CCTV was turned off, we can only speculate that they didn’t want evidence of the victim arriving at the home
but they created their own photographic evidence it goes without saying they are brutal and sadistic ,they carved ” treason ” into his back.
from the qitness testimony , we know that he was brutally tortured, he was decapitated with an ax and then cut into pieces-he was fed into the meat grinder
they put his flesh into bags and then dumped it in the danube river
the next victim they killed because he was in the rival criminal clan
he was lured by an acquainance who had secretly turned on him , under the pretense to bya gun
the friend drove him to a meadow near the slaughterhouse, but belivuk’s gang was waiting, they jumped him and tied him up . then took him in a van to the slaughter house
and then stared sharing photos with their crew on the sky app
this is belivuk in the black t-shirt.the man smiling eventually became one of the cooperating witnesses.
they cut off the victim’s head with an ax- they wrote korać pička which translate to” korać pussy” on his back in his own blood. korać was the name of the rival gang’s boss
and then sent the murdered man’s boss his picture
belivuk gloats ” look , mexico in the middle of belgrade ,hahaha”
the last one – i’ll mention was actually the best man to one of the members of belivuk’s group
it took work to lure and persuade these victime, they had to find them ,surveil them , and do this all without being detected , he was also lured with a promise to sell him a gun.
they brought him to the home above the slaughterhouse , they played with him made fun of his mask as they took pictures, but at the same time they were sending these pictures to their friends they made him think he was there still to buy a gun
knowing full well that the whole thing was a ruse. then they took him downstars to the slaughterhouse.
they joked.” he tripped.”
then belivuk took an ax and chopped off his head and his friend got to work ….
” i just chopped him up”
later they described the victim :
“he was sick in the head, his organs weren’t exactly in good shape either “
and then …
serbian police arrested the gang
so that’s it? the government got the bad guys abd uts case closed? not quite.
this is where it actually gets interesting, for years,there have been allegations that the serbian government is very closely linked to organized crime groups including belivuk’s group.
this gang was very much tied to Vučić and his government and not just that , actually this gang was in a way created by the state.belivuk’s group was definitely under the command of the police it sounds bizarre ,but this is really true.
to understand we need to take a little step back to 2017
three years before “the slaughterhouse” murders
CCTV footage of the murder that happened in the center of belgrade,police arrested actually belivuk and his associates and later he was charged for particpating in this murder.
and not just that , police also seized his phones, so police got belivuk’s phone, and made a report on the WhatsApp messages they found inside
this report was actually first published by the magazine NIN.
i also want to make clear that this report on belivuk’s WhatsApp messages was never supposed to fall into the hands of journalists.
basically it’s a analysis of belivuk’s WhatsApp messages, when you analyze these messages belivuk’s messages from that time ,he was under the control of one really important policeman.
this policeman was one of the top persons of serbian Gendarmerie
the gendarme is telling to belivuk:” we are in a powerful position brother ,you have me and i am one of the 1o most important officials in the police and i’m at your service 24- 7 .”
so the gendarme that needed to deal with hooligans was actually the boss of belivuk’s group and giving him directions -what he should do ,what he should not do- what violence he should be involved in and what not.
and it’s pretty quite shocking to have such a leading person in the police.
this gendarme telling this is pretty devastating,but there’s another incident with this police officer that is even more fascinating
it’s actually a secret recording of him when he’s holding a meeting with belivuk’s men.
this gendarme was sitting with members of his group and discussing lots of things about the underworld
” we are involved everywhere and someone’s head is in a bag everywhere ,from our peopleall the information , everything is possible , you have the whole police in your hands but you are the weakest when you think you are the most powerful”
-the gendarme
this audio is clearly showing that this gendarme had a role and that he was some sort of the boss to these hooligans.
it’s clear because he’s the one who is actually leading this meeting and saying this, so this was kind of definite evidence that journalists managed to provide in public,
but yet he’s still in the police
lastly back to the messages between the dengarm and belivuk, it wasn’t just one rouge police official , it goes much deeper.
so here ,the gendarme writes to belivuk:” be patient please , here is Dijana begging you .”
the gendarme mentions women named Dijana.
he is referring to Dijana Hrkalović as confirmed by the secret police report.
this gendarme was just working on behalf of literally the second most powerful person in serbian police- and that’s Dijana Hrkalović
she was officially general secretary of the police which means literally she is the right hand man of the minister of police himself.
and when he was communicating to belivuk, he would say that ‘ Dijana’ or ‘D’, using first letter of her name want’s you to do this or she wants you not to dothis
so literally he was just passing her commands to belivuk and that’s completely clear from the messages and not just that , we can see that she was not working on her own because the gendarme would usually tell belivuk that Dijana wants you to do this. but you should also know that ‘ boss ‘ and ‘ big boss ‘ which he never named also agree with her
these politicians were never named in these messages, they were just called ‘ boss ‘ and ‘ big boss’
Dijana Hrkalović eventually in the end was fired from the police, she was hiding these WhatsApp messages from the prosecutor who actually were evidences for high level corruption
so Dijana ,the second most powerful police official in serbia failed to hand over the very WhatsApp messages that implicated herself with belivuk
so is all of this the biggest scandal in serbia ? No….
diana was only charged with abuse of office , and she’s already out of prison
nothing happened to the gendarme,he is still on the police force as far as we know
the only ones in jail are belivuk and his gang.
and jyst ti naje ckear m bekuvyj debues taking part in any of the murders in the slaughterhouse.
but on another note , belivuk did testify at the trial that he previously worked for the needs and at the service of president Aleksandar Vučić .
and yes the Vučić government did try to suppress this testimony from becoming public.
it didn’t work as it got published
” people who are corrupt in the government are even worse than the belivuk group itself. because they are the government and they decide to cooperate with hooligans ,with criminals, so they are even worse”