JAMAICAN basketballer Kimani Ffriend has been living a nightmare since his Skoda Fabia motorcar hit and killed a Serbian woman on a rainy Belgrade morning on November 3, 2012.

The night before, a Friday, was planned for celebrations with friends and was expected to go into the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Ffriend was in high spirits as his process for Serbian citizenship was expected to come to an end the Monday morning with signing of final documents.

The closure of that process also meant his freedom to leave the Eastern European nation still bearing the ugly scars from a socialist/communist past when it was a part of the former Yugoslavia.

There was so much to celebrate that night for the small party of friends. In addition to being on the verge of becoming a citizen through his Serbian wife, the former centre in the NBA was also due to move to Spain to take up a lucrative contract with top club CB Valladolid — leaving Belgrade’s Metalac Valjevo where he had played since he came back to the breakaway country for his citizenship-processing.

Ffriend was keen on getting European Union citizenship as it would make it easier for him to move around the continent on the professional basketball circuit, plus having that status would likely guarantee him bigger deals with clubs. It was all business.

Also on the plate to celebrate that weekend was the impending departure to Paris of Ffriend’s closest Serbian buddy, Johny Golubovic, who was moving on to greener pastures in his career.

But on that rainy night in downtown Belgrade a fiendish citizen was also out and about — Satan himself.

And Ffriend, 35 at the time, and Nevena Dragutinovic, a 29-year-old account executive, were in his sights; the Devil did not miss his mark.

In the final analysis, Dragutinovic was dead and Ffriend was behind bars for killing her in a motor crash that made international headlines.

Ffriend, speaking with Jamaica Observer under house arrest from Belgrade last week, reiterated his dissatisfaction with the whole court process, claiming he did not get a fair trial and that the three-year sentence imposed by the Belgrade Supreme Court on September 5 was excessive.

In his opinion, he should have walked free if his version of events that fateful morning was taken into account. And by his admission, his lawyers vigorously argued the case, but from day one he was a marked man.

Ffriend thought he was not only judged by the court, but public opinion which had put the noose around his neck in the high-profile trial. The fact that Dragutinovic was the girlfriend of famous Serbian folk singer Neven Zlavanevic, and Ffriend being viewed as a spoilt, big-spending basketball star with success in the USA, the Serbian media followed the case like a hound on the trail of its next meal, twisting the truth “to sell their newspapers”.

Ffriend believes also that those factors may have influenced the court’s final decision in handing down the sentence.

But the Jamaican was not fooling himself as he knew it was always going to be difficult to get an acquittal when so much was stacked against him.

“Because I am a professional athlete, a woman died and alcohol was involved, and the victim was the boyfriend of a famous folk singer here, and because a lot of people in Serbia know me here, there was a lot of public pressure towards my trial,” he said.

But he conceded that the woman judge, Slavica Nikolic, with all the public pressure, “was doing things transparently”.

“If you ask me about the verdict (handed down on September 5, 2014), of course I am not happy. Witnesses in the car which were the friends of the deceased, the court expert and the police, their story was contradictory to what happened. The court expert said my version of events was possible based on the material evidence, but the problem was I never had a witness.

“The police did not take the statements of my witnesses at the crash scene; they only took the statements of the witnesses of the deceased, which would be the sister and the two friends and the taxi driver who were in the car that night. Anybody else who was on the scene either didn’t want to speak or the police didn’t take their information,” said Ffriend.

According to what played out in court, Dragutinovic was struck by a car driven by Ffriend at about 4:20 am on Novemember 3, 2012, shortly after she alighted, from a taxicab, in a drunken state and in the middle of the road. She was later found to have an excessive blood alcohol level of 2.0. Ffriend was measured at 0.98.

The Jamaican was also accused of travelling at a speed of 55 kph (about 31 mph) and was said to have run a traffic light. His lawyers, headed by lead attorney Yugoslav Tintor, argued in court that whether their client was drinking or not he could not, have avoided hitting the victim who alighted from the cab in the middle of the road; there was no way he would have had time to take evasive action.

Dragutinovic, her twin sister Jovana and other friends were out partying that night at a night club and were drinking, similarly to what Ffriend and his pals were doing on the other side of town.

Ffriend admitted in court to having consumed three drinks of vodka and orange juice on the night of the accident.

After 10 months languishing in jail awaiting trial, and another year under house arrest during the court proceedings, the judge, without a jury, finally handed down her verdict of three years and banned Ffriend from driving for two.

The Jamaican, now 37, will serve the remainder of that sentence under house arrest as he awaits the appeal process to begin.

“Hopefully, the appeal process is to start in another month. If they had made a decision based on what’s on the court papers and according to the law, I should be free right now. After appellation, they could set me free, they could set me free with bracelet, probation, and they could even send back the case to the first court and I would have to start from the beginning. My lawyer said this could be a possibility, but I am thinking positive that they (appeals judges) will come to some reasonable decision,” he explained.

If the appeal fails to reduce Ffriend’s sentence, he would have to now serve at least one year after time spent in custody has been computed.

“On the day of sentencing, the judge calculated the 10 months in jail and the time I served in house arrest together as time served, so in reality I will only have one year left to serve as of November 3 when I first went into custody,” Ffriend noted.

Meanwhile, in reflecting on another aspect of the case, Ffriend said he believes being black worked against him in the police case and the resulting trial.

“I must say that Serbia in general is not a racist country, but I do believe based on what happened during the whole court process and everything that has been going on, it (racism) did play a small part in my trial,” he said.

Before the accident, Ffriend said he also experienced “many situations in Serbia where the colour of my skin was an issue”.

“I think it’s just a minority of people here that have a problem with my colour; I think it’s more a jealousy thing here. For the most part, I was comfortable living in Serbia as I didn’t have too many problems, but at the same time I had to be very aware of some of the places I went to, especially at nights.

“There are some clubs that I wouldn’t go to because here they (Serbians) tend to get drunk and when they do they get crazy, and if you are by yourself as a black man walking, you have hooligans who will make problems for you.

“But in the end I have to say that my experiences with racism would be small compared to the more positives experiences I have had here.”

Ffriend has had stints with NBA teams the Miami Heat, LA Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies. He last represented Jamaica at the Centro Basketball Championships in 2012, from which Jamaica qualified for the FIBA Championships of the Americas.

See related stories in the Sunday Observer.