Slobodan Milošević

It was the morning after the February 29-March 1 1992 independence referendum in Bosnia and Herzegovina - an event that a well-known BBC journalist had described to me, sipping a beer, as "good news at last from the Balkans".

Serbian President Alexander Vucic has announced that the country will purchase two more Russian Kamov helicopters.

Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday found four former Serbian state security employees guilty after a retrial of the murder in 1999 of journalist and editor Slavko Curuvija, who was known for his opposition to the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

"When I came to [daily newspaper] Borba in 1990, he was a reporter and political analyst, and known for writing a couple of pamphlets, one of which I remember was about the people from Goli Otok [political prison in Socialist Yugoslavia]," Gunjic recalled.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Croatian city of Vukovar into the hands of the former Yugoslav army. The city was captured after a three-month siege and virtually destroyed to the ground by round-the-clock bombing. The first war crimes in Europe after the end of the Second World War were committed here.

"The commander ordered that the Communication Centre will no longer receive calls," said a note entered at 5.10pm on November 9, 2001 in the daily log of the Communication Centre in Kula, the headquarters of Serbia's State Security Special Operations Unit, the JSO.

The Serbian authorities are using memorialisation of the 1990s wars to manufacture a populist narrative of national pride and victimhood for political advantage, says a new report by the Humanitarian Law Centre which was launched on Tuesday evening in Belgrade.

"Balkanistica was originally designed as a bilingual programme and its content will be unique. It is not only about the scientific aspects of the languages in the Balkans, but also the cultural, historical and literary aspects," Rugova told BIRN.

Long notorious for his violent behaviour, Belivuk nevertheless spent relatively little time behind bars, a fact some have ascribed to the documented connections between his crime gang and state officials of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS.

At the beginning of this year, Belivuk appears to have fallen out of favour.

Former Yugoslav Navy Fleet Admiral Branko Mamula in 1977. Photo: Private archive of Branko Mamula.

Born into a Serb family in Croatia in 1921, Mamula became a member of the Communist Party in his youth. At the start of Yugoslavia's involvement in World War II in 1941, he joined the Partisan resistance movement led by Josip Broz Tito.