I was asked to kill target one month before Jill murder

Journalist also ambushed & shot in head on way home

- TOM PETTIFOR and MATTHEW YOUNG

A MONTH before Jill Dando was shot dead, Milorad Ulemek was asked to murder a target on his doorstep who he later found was a leading journalist, a court heard.

The ruthless assassin claimed he was fighting in Kosovo in March 1999 when he was summoned to Belgrade by spymaster Radomir Markovic.

Markovic and Ulemek are serving 40 years in jail for plotting two assassinations for brutal dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006.

In 2016, Serbian Ulemek, 56, gave evidence at the trial of four former intelligence officers charged with the murder of newspaper owner Slavko Curuvija. He was shot dead outside his Belgrade home on April 11, 1999.

Jill was killed on April 26.

Curuvija had upset Milosevic and the president's powerful wife Mira, a former friend.

Like Jill, he was going home when he was ambushed from behind, forced to the ground and shot at close range in the head.

Ulemek said in 2014 that Markovic asked him to perform a "special task".

He claimed there was one person who "seriously endangers the security of the state" who should be "removed". Ulemek said he declined the request because he was needed in Kosovo.

Nicknamed the Legionnaire, after serving in the French Foreign Legion, Ulemek has played a leading role in some of Serbia's most violent acts.

He is reported to have made millions running one of Serbia's top crime gangs and was kingmaker for the first democratic leader, only to plot his murder.

Ulemek shot up two nightclubs and was suspected of contact with Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, who was inspired by "Serb nationalists".

Ulemek was born in Belgrade on March 15, 1968, to father Milan, an officer in Josip Tito's Yugoslav People's Army, and Croatian mother Natalija.