Belgrade Special Police

rdf:langString Belgrade Special Police

rdf:langString The Belgrade Special Police (Serbo-Croatian: Specijalna policija Uprave grada Beograda, SP UGB) was a Serbian collaborationist police organisation directed and controlled by the German Gestapo (German: Geheime Staatspolizei) in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from 1941 to 1944 during World War II. It grew out of the Belgrade General Police of the interwar period, which had a significant role in the suppression of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia after that organisation was banned in 1920. Eighty per cent of work of the SP UGB related to suspected communists. It initially had a responsibility to investigate other groups, such as the Chetniks of Draža Mihailović, but ended up cooperating with Mihailović's Chetnik movement instead. The SP UGB had significant autonomy in who it arrested, tortured and interrogated, and who it sent to the Banjica concentration camp, but did not have the power to release prisoners from the camp, a power which was retained by the Gestapo. The SP UGB exchanged information with a number of different agencies, including the German military intelligence service, the Abwehr, and other collaborationist organisations such as the Serbian Volunteer Corps.