333 drug deals

Life imprisonment for mafia boss “Dexter” now fixed

The 35-year-old Serbian alias "Dexter" in the Vienna Regional Court at the end of 2023

(Bild: zVg, Krone KREATIV)

The Palace of Justice in Vienna's city center became a high-security zone on Wednesday. Dozens of Cobra, WEGA and other officers surrounded the building. A drone was deployed and the roof terrace was guarded by heavily armed officers. The reason: a mafia godfather, who goes by the nickname "Dexter", was appealing against his sentence at the Higher Regional Court.

"I have the feeling that I don't deserve this," he said at his appeal hearing, defended by lawyer Werner Tomanek. The three-judge panel took a different view: it confirmed the jury's maximum sentence - making it legally binding.

In December 2023, the Serb was sentenced to life imprisonment for 333 drug deals involving half a tonne of cocaine and 100 kilograms of heroin. "First of all, I would like to thank the jury for their patience," began prosecutor Jörg Santin in his closing statement. The lay judges had shown a great deal of stamina: After the trial kicked off at the end of September, she had to endure nothing but days of readings of chat messages.

Leading member of the Serbian-Montenegrin mafia
These chat messages were supposed to prove that the accused Serbian alias "Dexter" - a leading member of a Serbian-Montenegrin gang - was involved in hundreds of cases of drug procurement and transfers. The questions put to the jury on the day of the verdict took a correspondingly long time to read out. Although there were only two, each drug transaction had to be mentioned individually. Judge Wolfgang Etl read them out to the packed courtroom for three and a half hours until the prosecution and defense came to their closing arguments.

Lawyer Werner Tomanek defended the accused mafia boss.

(Bild: Sophie Pratschner)

Surveillance methods "like in the GDR"
The chat messages also played the most central role in the lengthy trial for lawyer Tomanek. According to the defense lawyer, the procurement and use of the data was highly questionable. According to the Code of Criminal Procedure, an urgent suspicion would be required to justify the surveillance of encrypted messages. This was not the case at the time of the crime. The evidence was thus obtained unlawfully. "This is an instrument of power. It's like the structural opening of the postal service in the GDR," Tomanek compares.

"I was treated like a terrorist"
The accused "Dexter" also expressed his outrage in his closing words: "I am being tried here unconstitutionally. I have been treated like a terrorist" - he also pointed to the four heavily armed judicial guards in the courtroom and two outside the door. The 35-year-old maintained his denial that he was only the manager of a small café in Belgrade, Serbia: "Where are these millions and real estate or cars? You know how mafia bosses live," he said.

However, the jury did not need to see them to find the man, who also had a criminal record for murder, guilty of large-scale drug trafficking - the reading of the verdict also took hours. There was even a break for the two female jurors who took turns to read out the verdict. Due to the length of the trial, the panel of judges had no other choice: life imprisonment.

At the end of the previous year, the Serb had already been sentenced in Vienna to eleven years in prison for aggravated robbery. In his home country, he was also serving an eleven-year prison sentence for murder.