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The SDG was created on 11 October 1990 by twenty members of the Red Star Belgrade football club Ultra group Delije Sever. The group was under the command of the Territorial Defense, a regular military in charge of the territories of Croatia populated predominantly by Serbs during the first half of the 1990s. According to historian Tony Judt, the group was one of several irregular units which “were little more than organized bands of thugs and criminals, armed by Belgrade.“BOOK, Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, October 6, 2005, 675, The SDG set up their headquarters and training camp in a former military facility in Erdut. It saw action from mid-1991 to late 1995, initially in the Vukovar region of Croatia. It was supplied and equipped from the reserves of the Serbian police force during the War in Croatia and Bosnia.After war broke out in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia in the fall of 1991 and in Bosnia in April 1992, Arkan and his units moved to attack different territories in these countries. In Croatia, the Tigers fought in various locales in Eastern Slavonia.{{quotation|Paramilitary units are responsible for some of the most brutal aspects of ethnic cleansing. Two of the units that have played a major role in the ethnic cleansing campaign in BiH, the Chetniks associated with Vojislav Å eÅ¡elj and the Tigers associated with Željko Ražnatović (Arkan), have been active in the Republic of Serbia as well...Arkan’s Tigers have staged military training exercises allegedly designed to intimidate Albanian residents in Kosovo.The policy of ethnic cleansing (Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts) {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504142243www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/ANX/IV.htm |date=2012-05-04 }}|Report of United Nations Commission on ethnic cleansing in Bosnia}}The SDG, under the command of Arkan, massacred hundreds of people in eastern Croatia and Bosnia and HerzegovinaTony Judt; (2006) Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, chapter XXI; Penguin Books, {{ISBN| 0143037757}} while in the early ethnic cleansing campaigns in eastern Bosnia this unit had a major role.Michael A. Innes; (2006) Bosnian Security after Dayton: New Perspectives (Contemporary Security Studies) p. 75; Routledge, {{ISBN|041565369X}} In autumn 1995, Arkan’s troops fought in the area of Banja Luka, Sanski Most and Prijedor where they were routed. Arkan personally led most war actions, and rewarded his most efficient officers and soldiers with ranks, medals and eventually the products of lootings. The SDG was officially disbanded in April 1996, and all of its members were ordered to join the Yugoslav Army.NEWS, Stojanovic, Milica, 23 March 2023, Serbia Urged to Prosecute Arkan’s Paramilitaries for War Crimes,balkaninsight.com/2023/03/23/serbia-urged-to-prosecute-arkans-paramilitaries-for-war-crimes/, Balkan Insight, Besides Arkan, a notable member of the SDG was his right-hand man, Colonel NebojÅ¡a Djordjević, who was murdered in late 1996. Another notable member was Milorad Ulemek, who is now serving a 40-year sentence for his involvement in the assassination of Serbia’s pro-Western prime minister Zoran ĐinÄ‘ić in 2003.NEWS, INTERVJU, MILORAD ULEMEK LEGIJA: Niko u državi nema muda da obnovi suÄ‘enje,www.ekspres.net/drustvo/hronika/intervju-milorad-ulemek-legija-niko-u-drzavi-nema-muda-da-obnovi-sudenje, 11 June 2018, ekspres.net, EKSPRES, 1 June 2016, sr, 17 October 2017,www.ekspres.net/drustvo/hronika/intervju-milorad-ulemek-legija-niko-u-drzavi-nema-muda-da-obnovi-sudenje," title="web.archive.org/web/20171017184807www.ekspres.net/drustvo/hronika/intervju-milorad-ulemek-legija-niko-u-drzavi-nema-muda-da-obnovi-sudenje,">web.archive.org/web/20171017184807www.ekspres.net/drustvo/hronika/intervju-milorad-ulemek-legija-niko-u-drzavi-nema-muda-da-obnovi-sudenje, dead,

War crimes charges

Željko Ražnatović was indicted in 1997 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his command 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 in Bijeljina and Zvornik in 1992.The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charged the SDG, under the command or supervision of Željko Ražnatović with the following:WEB, 23 September 1997, THE PROSECUTOR OF THE TRIBUNAL AGAINST ZELJKO RAZNJATOVIC also known as “ARKAN”,www.icty.org/x/cases/zeljko_raznjatovic/ind/en/ark-ii970930e.pdf,

• Forcibly detaining approximately thirty non-Serb men and one woman, without food or water, in an inadequately ventilated boiler room of approximately {{convert|5|m2|spell=in}} in size.
• Transporting twelve non-Serb men from Sanski Most to an isolated location in the village of Trnova, where they shot and killed eleven of the men and critically wounded the twelfth.
• Transporting approximately sixty-seven non-Serb men and one woman from Sanski Most, Å ehovci, and Pobrijeze to an isolated location in the village of Sasina and shooting them, killing sixty-five of the captives and wounding two survivors.
• Forcibly detaining approximately thirty-five Muslim Bosnian men in an inadequately ventilated boiler room around {{convert|5|m2|spell=in}}, beating them while also depriving them of food and water, resulting in the deaths of two men.WEB, Ražnatović: Initial Indictment,www.icty.org/x/cases/zeljko_raznjatovic/ind/en/ark-ii970930e.pdf, 1 March 2014,
• The rape of a Muslim Bosnian woman on a bus outside the Hotel Sanus in Sanski Most.

Prominent members

• Željko Ražnatović – SDG Commander
• Borislav Pelević – Serbian presidential candidate in 2002 and 2004
• Milorad Ulemek – JSO Commander
• Zvezdan Jovanović – JSO Commander
• Mihajlo Ulemek – SDG Colonel and media personalityBOOK, VukuÅ¡ić, Iva,books.google.com/books?id=2V2CEAAAQBAJ&dq=mihajlo+ulemek&pg=PT135, Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia: State Connections and Patterns of Violence, 2022-09-30, Taylor & Francis, 978-1-000-70971-1, en,
• SrÄ‘an Golubović - Trance DJ (not to be mistaken with a film director of the same name)

Many of the former members of “Arkan Tigers” are prominent figures in Serbia, maintaining close ties between each other and with Russian nationalist organisations. Jugoslav Simić and Svetozar Pejović posed with Russian Night Wolves, Ceca (Arkan’s widow) performed for Vladimir Putin during his visit in Serbia, SrÄ‘an Golubović is a popular trance performer known as “DJ Max” and was identified by Rolling Stone as the SDG soldier kicking dead bodies of a Bosniak family in Bijeljina on a photo from 1992.WEB, The DJ and the War Crimes — Rolling Stone,investigation.rollingstone.com/, 2023-01-20, investigation.rollingstone.com,

In popular culture

• in the 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines (loosely based on the story of pilot Scott O’Grady during the Bosnian War), the unit appears as the main antagonists, led by the fictional Miroslav Lokar.
• In the 2008 Serbian film The Tour, a group of Serbian actors go on a tour in war-torn Bosnia. Among other factions, they meet an unnamed paramilitary unit wearing insignia similar to those of the Serb Volunteer Guard. The unit’s commander (played by Sergej Trifunović) is clearly based on Arkan.
• In the 2012 Japanese anime Jormungand, one of the antagonists is Dragan Nikolaevich, commander of the Balkan Dragons. His looks and even his biography bear resounding resemblance to those of Arkan.
• The 2012 film Twice Born is based on a novel by Margaret Mazzantini set in the background of Bosnian War.
• In fourteenth episode of the first season of the crime procedural (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), “Homo Homini Lupis”, the suspect of the investigation is accused of raping a young girl. In the course of the detectives’ interrogation, they identify the suspect as a former member of the volunteer guard due to a tiger tattoo on his back and attempt to establish a pattern of behavior by pointing to the war crimes that occurred in Bosnia.

See also

• Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars
• List of Serbian paramilitary formations

References

{{Reflist|2}}

Books

• BOOK, Thomas, Nigel, Thomas, 2006, Boots Security Ltd.,bootssecurity.com/, Security Guard Services in Toronto, 9781472801968, 11 May 2013, {{Dead link|date=October 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

External links

{{commons category|Serb Volunteer Guard}}

• ICTY indictment against Arkan

{{Yugoslav Wars}}{{Serbian minority institutions and organizations in Croatia}}