page_title: Serbia–United States relations
section_title: Serbian anti-communists in the United States
hierarchical_section_title: Serbia–United States relations / History / Cold War relations (1945–1991) / Serbian anti-communists in the United States
caption_attribution_description: English: &#160;United States, Chicago, O'Hare International Airport. American Airlines Boeing 727-23, N1979, c/n 18435/51, first flight on June 3, 1964, delivered to American Airlines on June 29, 1964. Was then converted to 727-23(F) for Pacific International Airlines registered HP-1299PFC. Sold to Angola Air Charter as D2-FCJ. Sold to Palau Marine Industries C. as N518PM. Sold to World Airways and registered N9179 also with Frontier Horizon, Flying Tigers, Spirit of America Arlines and Amerijet International. Lastly to Federal Express as N518FE. Was scrapped in 2003.
context_page_description: Serbia–United States relations are bilateral relations between the Republic of Serbia and the United States of America. They were first established in 1882 with the Kingdom of Serbia. From 1918 to 2006, the United States maintained relations with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is considered the legal successor.
  At the end of the 19th century, the United States sought to take advantage of the Ottoman Empire's retreat from the Balkans by establishing diplomatic relations with the region's newly emerged nation states, among which was Serbia. The two countries were allies during World War I. After the war, Serbia united with Montenegro and territories previously held by Austria-Hungary to a create a unified South Slavic state that would come to be known as Yugoslavia. The country had diplomatic relations with the United States up to the start of World War II. During World War II in Yugoslavia, the United States supported the Serbian royalist Chetniks over their rivals, the communist Partisans.
context_section_description: For much of the socialist period, the United States was a haven for many Serbian anti-communists living outside Yugoslavia. On 20 June 1979, a Serbian nationalist named Nikola Kavaja hijacked American Airlines Flight 293 from New York City with the intention of crashing the Boeing 707 into League of Communists of Yugoslavia headquarters in Belgrade. The aircraft, however, landed in Shannon, Ireland, where Kavaja were arrested.
  A group of six Serbian nationalists, among them Boško Radonjić, placed a home-made bomb in the home of the Yugoslav consulate in Chicago in 1975. Radonjić later became the leader of the Westies gang in New York City, where he participated in organized crime and racketeering. He eventually became one of the most feared gangsters in the New York City underworld, and developed extensive friendships with Vojislav Stanimirović, John Gotti and the Gambino family. After Sammy Gravano turned John Gotti in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December 1990, Radonjić was highly suspected to have attempted to fix the trial on John Gotti's behalf. As a result of this, Radonjić was arrested on December 1999 during a spectacular rerouted plane going to Cuba to a lockdown at Miami International Airport when he was tracked down by the FBI. He was arrested in the United States again in January 2000 for further investigation of the 1992 Gotti trial. Upon release in 2001, he left the United States and moved back to Serbia where he lived until his death in 2011. He was also an admirer and long-time friend of Radovan Karadžić until the latter went into hiding in 1996.
  In the 1980s, Vojislav Šešelj taught political science at the University of Michigan after being expelled by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1981. In June 1989, he traveled to the United States again to meet with Momčilo Đujić in San Marcos, California, where Đujić named him Chetnik Vojvoda (duke in Serbian). He went on to form the Serbian Radical Party in 1991 and was accused by the ICTY tribunal of leading the Beli Orlovi militants in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in war-state Republic of Serbian Krajina. Radovan Karadžić pursued post-graduate medical studies at Columbia University from 1974 to 1975, but did so without any specific political agenda at the time being; he later became the war-time president of the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War and subsequently went into hiding in Serbia until his capture in 2008 for ICTY charges of war crimes and genocide.
caption: Nikola Kavaja hijacked American Airlines Flight 293 on June 20, 1979 with the intention of crashing it into the League of Communists building in Belgrade.
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