Arkan

Željko Ražnatović (Жељко Ражнатовић, ; 17 April 1952 – 15 January 2000), better known as Arkan (Аркан), was a Serbian mobster and head of the Serb paramilitary force called the Serb Volunteer Guard during the Yugoslav Wars.

Teenaged Ražnatović was arrested for the first time in 1966 for snatching women's purses around Tašmajdan Park, spending a year at a juvenile detention center not far from Belgrade.

His father then sent him to the seaside town of Kotor (SR Montenegro) in order to join the Yugoslav Navy, but young Ražnatović had other plans (ending up in Paris at the age of fifteen).

In 1969 he was arrested by French police and deported home, where he was sentenced to three years at the detention center in Valjevo for several burglaries.

During this time he organized his own gang in the prison.

In his youth, Ražnatović was a ward of his father's friend, the Slovenian politician and Federal Minister of the Interior, Stane Dolanc.

Dolanc was chief of the Directorate for State Security (UDBA) and a close associate of President Josip Broz Tito.

He was on Interpol's most wanted list in the 1970s and 1980s for robberies and murders committed in a number of countries across Europe, and was later indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity.

In 1972, aged 20, Ražnatović migrated to Western Europe.

Abroad, he was introduced to and kept contact with many well-known criminals from Yugoslavia, such as Ljuba Zemunac, Ranko Rubežić, Đorđe "Giška" Božović, Goran Vuković, etc., all of whom were also occasionally contracted by the UDBA, and all of whom have since been assassinated or otherwise died.

Ražnatović took the nickname "Arkan" from one of his forged passports.

On 28 December 1973, he was arrested in Belgium following a bank robbery, and was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Ražnatović managed to escape from the Verviers prison on 4 July 1979.

Although he was apprehended in the Netherlands on 24 October 1979, the few months he was free were enough for at least two more armed robberies in Sweden and three more in the Netherlands.

Whenever Ražnatović was in trouble, Dolanc helped him, allegedly as a reward for his services to the UDBA, as seen in the escape from the Lugano prison in 1981.

Dolanc is quoted as having said: "One Arkan is worth more than the whole UDBA."

Serving a seven-year sentence at a prison in Amsterdam, Ražnatović pulled off another escape on 8 May 1981 after someone slipped him a gun.

Wasting no time, more robberies followed, this time in West Germany, where after less than a month of freedom he was arrested in Frankfurt on 5 June 1981 following a jewellery store stickup.

In the ensuing shootout with police he was lightly wounded, resulting in his placement in the prison hospital ward.

Looser security allowed Ražnatović to escape again only four days later, on 9 June, supposedly by jumping from the window, beating up the first passerby and stealing his clothing before disappearing.

His final European arrest occurred in Basel, Switzerland, during a routine traffic check on 15 February 1983.

However, he managed to escape again within months, this time from Thorberg prison on 27 April.

It is widely speculated that Ražnatović was closely affiliated with the UDBA throughout his criminal career abroad.

He had convictions or warrants in Belgium (bank robberies, prison escape), the Netherlands (armed robberies, prison escape), Sweden (twenty burglaries, seven bank robberies, prison escape, attempted murder ), West Germany (armed robberies, prison escape), Austria, Switzerland (armed robberies, prison escape), and Italy.

Ražnatović returned to Belgrade in May 1983, continuing his criminal career by managing a number of illegal activities.

In November of that year, six months after his return, a bank in Zagreb was robbed with the thieves leaving a rose on the counter (allegedly Ražnatović's signature from his robberies in Western Europe).

Looking to question Ražnatović about his whereabouts during the robbery, two policemen, members of the Secretariat of Internal Affairs' (SUP) Tenth department from the Belgrade municipality of Palilula, showed up in civilian clothing at his mother's apartment on 27 March Street in Belgrade.

Ražnatović happened to not be home at the moment, so the policemen introduced themselves to his mother as "friends of her son looking to return a cash debt they owed him" and asked the woman if they could wait for him to return to the apartment.

Ražnatović's mother phoned him to say that two unknown males waited for him.

In a 1991 interview he recalled: "He didn't really hit me in a classical sense, he'd basically grab me and slam me against the floor."

In his youth, Ražnatović aspired to become a pilot as his father had been.

Due to the highly demanding and significant positions of his parents, there appeared to be very little time in which a bond was able to be established between parents and children.

Ražnatović's parents eventually divorced during his teenage years.

Up until his assassination in January 2000, Ražnatović was the most powerful organized crime figure in the Balkans.

Željko Ražnatović was born in Brežice, a small border town in Lower Styria, PR Slovenia, FPR Yugoslavia.

His father Veljko, was born in Rijeka Crnojevića near Cetinje, and had taken part in the Partisan liberation of Pristina (Kosovo) during World War II.

Later on, Veljko served as a decorated officer in the SFR-Yugoslav Air Force, being highly ranked for his notable involvement in World War II.

Veljko was stationed in Slovenian Styria at the time when his fourth child Željko was born.

Infant Željko spent part of his childhood in Zagreb (SR Croatia) and Pančevo (SR Serbia), before his father's job eventually took the family to the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade (SR Serbia), which is considered his hometown.

He grew up with three older sisters in a strict, militaristic patriarchal household with regular physical abuse from his father.