The Third Bullet: the political background of the assassination of Zoran Đinđić (Serbian: Treći metak: politička pozadina ubistva Zorana Đinđića) is a 2014 non-fiction book written by security officer Milan Veruović and journalist Nikola Vrzić.

Many parallel structures in the country, including the Belgrade-based criminal gangs, most notably the Zemun Clan saw the great threat in government actions.

Dejan Mileković Bagzi, a truck driver who had a goal to perform the traffic accident, while the other members had to kill the Prime Minister with the rocket throwers after the car incident.

On 12 March 2003, at 12:25 Central European Time, Đinđić was fatally wounded by a gunshot while entering the Serbian government building where he was supposed to meet Foreign Minister of Sweden, Anna Lindh, and her colleague Jan O. Karlsson.

According to the official verdict, member of JSO Zvezdan Jovanović, fatally shot Đinđić from the window of a building approximately 180 meters away, using a 7.62mm Heckler & Koch G3 rifle.

[4] In full-scale police operation Sabre, 11,665 people were detained in Serbia, many criminals have been killed, including the boss of Zemun Clan Dušan Spasojević.

On 23 May 2007, the Special Court found Simović and eleven other men - Milorad Ulemek, Zvezdan Jovanović, Dejan Milenković, Vladimir Milisavljević, Sretko Kalinić, Ninoslav Konstantinović, Milan Jurišić, Dušan Krsmanović, Željko Tojaga, Saša Pejaković and Branislav Bezarević - guilty for the premeditated murder of Zoran Đinđić.

[4] In April 2008, Carla Del Ponte, former Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals, published a book The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals, in which she stated that Đinđić cooperated with the Hague Tribunal unconditionally in accordance to international obligations of Serbia, even though he had great resistance in national political, intelligence and defence circles.

[8] They stated that: "he had become a threat to the Pax Americana in these areas"; that could be seen in his relationship with the Hague Tribunal whom he "didn't want to hand over war archives and generals", he mentioned the revision of the Dayton Agreement questioning the independence of Republika Srpska if the issue of Kosovo and Metohija is not discussed (via UN Resolution 1244).

[8] In the last interview he gave on 6 March 2003, Đinđić expressed concern that his western allies "are not honest friends of Serbia and are not willing to discuss the Kosovo issue, but rather", he suspects: "under wraps working on its independence".

The authors also accused several Đinđić's then close associates in covering up the traces of their connections with the Zemun Clan, and involvement in the assassination, most notably Vladimir Beba Popović (served as Secretary of the Communications Bureau at the time), Čedomir Jovanović (served as a member of parliament and vice president of Democratic Party at the time) and other associates.

Several media houses, including B92, Vreme and others reported pretty bold allegations, slandering the credibility of authors, also stating that the goal of their book was the "obstruction of judicial proceedings" and as extension of orchestrated media campaign directed against Đinđić's then close associates,[12] while protecting the political inspirators of Đinđić's assassination.

[12] Srđan Ćešić of the weekly news magazine Vreme accused authors of relaunching the "fiction" based conspiracy theories of the third bullet, refuted in court;[10] and other bold negative accusations on authors credibility, including the alleged changeable testimonies of Veruović he gave about the third bullet following the assassination.

[13] Žarko Korać, then close associate of Đinđić, served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia from 2001 until 2004 and acted as a Prime Minister from 17–18 March 2003, gave an interview in Peščanik in October 2014 about the book, stating that it is a "bad book" with the aim to challenge the official indictment, also blatantly discrediting both Vrzić and Veruović.

He had a task following the assassination to make a report about the eventual gaps in the security of Zoran Đinđić, which remained a state secret to this day.

Nata Mesarović, President of the Chamber in the trial, gave interview in Newsweek Serbia in June 2015, and answered whether she had read the book.