Government prosecutors of Montenegro claim that a former US Central Intelligence Agency officer helped pro-Russian conspirators organize a coup in 2016. Their goal was to kill then Prime Minister Milo Dukanović. unleashing a pro-Russian coup in the country to prevent its entry into NATO. The allegations emerged after 20 Serbs and Montenegrins were arrested in Montenegro for allegedly planning a coup. The arrests took place on election day, October 16, 2016, while the Montenegrins were grappling with the votes. The conspirators had even hired a "sharpshooter", "a professional killer" with the task of killing Đukanović. After killing the prime minister, the conspirators planned to storm the parliament and proclaim a coup.
Russia vehemently denied the allegations. But in March last year, then-British foreign secretary Boris Johnson allegedly validated the Montenegrin government's allegations. The trial of 20 men arrested in October 2016, as well as two Russians tried in absentia, took place in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica. During the trial, prosecutors questioned Joseph Assad, a former CIA officer, as a conspirator in the coup affair. Assad, born in Egypt, was an expert in counterterrorism in the CIA after arriving in the United States in 1990, but eventually left the agency to devote himself to his security company. It is believed that at the time of the alleged coup, Assad's company was employed by Aron Shaviv, a political strategist linked to the Democratic Front, a pro-Russian opposition party in Montenegro. Shaviv, who has British and Israeli citizenship, said he hired Assad's firm for counterintelligence against the Montenegrin security services. According to Shaviv, Montenegrin authorities have spied on him because of his ties to a pro-Russian domestic political party.
But prosecutors in the trial of the alleged coup leaders claim that Assad's role was to organize and provide escape routes and methods of attack for the coup leaders. In light of these allegations, a warrant was issued for Assad, accusing him of "operating with a criminal enterprise," according to the British newspaper Guardian. Assad dismissed the accusations as a "deceptive campaign". In a statement released on Saturday, he claimed to be "a loyal American who has played no part in any crime or coup in Montenegro." Meanwhile, the Democratic Front and a number of other opposition parties in Montenegro have denounced the government's claims of a failed coup as "publicity stunts" aimed at distracting the country's citizens from the state of the economy and other domestic concerns. .
