Relatives and friends of the man, an employee of a Coop supermarket in the Lausanne area, reacted with shock as grisly details emerged of the Swiss-Serbian man’s death last Sunday.

The Serbian policeman reportedly owed a debt of 6,000 francs ($6,365)  to the butcher’s friend, a mobile phone salesman.

The policeman agreed to a meeting with the salesman, who showed up in an Audi TT car with Swiss licence plates driven by the butcher, Le Matin reported.

According to its sources, the newspaper said that the cop agreed to settle the debt by offering the salesman a car in exchange.

He hopped in the back of the Audi driven by the butcher, so they could see the car, but he then used a gun to shoot the pair, Le Matin said.

The butcher was a “collateral victim”, the newspaper said.

The policeman has admitted to killing the two men then soaking their bodies in petrol and burning them in the car, according to reports from Serbia.

The Swiss man had been on holiday for two weeks seeing relatives in the Serb town of Jagodina, as he did every summer.

“He again sent me an SMS one hour before his death,” Vesna Milo, from the Serb centre of Geneva told Le Matin.

“Nothing left any forewarning of this tragedy.”

Milo, who plans to attend the man’s funeral in Serbia with other people from Switzerland, denounced the “anarchy” reigning in Serbia, noting that police there have been involved in many scandals recently.