Oath Keepers File Criminal Complaint against Gruhonjic and Lalic-Hegedis for ‘Hate Speech’

Photo: Beta/Milan Ilic

Representatives of the Oath Keepers party submitted on April 1 a criminal complaint to the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade, alleging "spreading and inciting racial, religious, and ethnic hatred and intolerance" by a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, and a journalist, Ana Lalic-Hegedis, suggesting "the elements of hate speech" in their public speeches.

"The Oath Keepers advocate the freedom of speech and the autonomy of the University, but Gruhonjic says that Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries should be squatted, and that the Serbian people have occupied the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, although they have been living there for centuries," said a member of the party’s Presidency, Dragana Miljanic, addressing reporters outside the Prosecutor's Office.

The party’s lawyer Dragoslav Ljubicanovic said that "the criminal complaint was rightly filed, as evidenced by the unfortunate events in front of the Faculty of Philosophy, where at a gathering organized by the aforementioned gentleman, the symbols of the Republic of Serbia were torn up and trampled on to a loud ovation."

The lawyer also said that the footage from the gathering in Dubrovnik "is not fresh," but that "nobody can use, even in jest, the name of a man who committed the most monstrous crimes against Serbs and against humanity," referring to the name of the commander of the Jasenovac concentration camp, Dinko Sakic.

Therefore, Ljubicanovic said, the Oath Keepers will inform the Embassy of Israel about that, as well as Croatia’s prosecutors, because the statements that served as a basis for the criminal complaint had been issued in Croatia.