Balkan crime groups exploit youths as hired assassins

Organized crime groups in Serbia and Montenegro are increasingly recruiting minors and young adults as paid assassins to insulate cartel leaders from prosecution. An investigation by BIRN highlights how these youths are treated as ‘disposable goods’ because they lack direct contact with gang leaders and cannot provide actionable intelligence if arrested.

In one documented incident in Belgrade, a 16-year-old shooter targeted a football hooligan faction leader but accidentally shot an unintended victim during a restaurant attack. The teenager was reportedly paid 5,000 euros for the hit and was later found with an encrypted phone containing instructions for a subsequent assassination valued at 150,000 euros.

Law enforcement sources suggest that these young perpetrators are often abandoned or even killed by their employers to avoid paying them or to facilitate the closing of police investigations by providing easy targets for arrest.