Interior Minister: It Is Normal To Sanction Those Threatening President Vucic and His Family

Ivica Dacic (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic on July 9 said “it is normal to sanction those” making threats which, he said, were endangering the safety of another person.

Speaking to TV Prva, Dacic said that the Prosecutor’s Office had formed a case regarding statements by Srdjan Skoro, a journalist of Zrenjanin-based KTV station, about Danilo Vucic, the Serbian president’s son, and would assess whether “they contain elements of a criminal offense.”

In a program on KTV station, Skoro said that in order to contribute to Serbia, Danilo Vucic should at his own expense and without bodyguards visit Majdanpek, a mining town in eastern Serbia, and Kosovo and Metohija, but also the lithium mine for to demonstrate that this metal was not hazardous.

The Higher Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade has ordered the First Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office to form a case and investigate whether Srdjan Skoro’s statements contained elements of the criminal offense of “endangering the safety” of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his family members.

The Office was instructed to obtain the video of the KTV program where Skoro had made the statements about the president and his son and to take other appropriate activities to establish whether those statements contained any element of the said criminal offense.

Dacic also said that “anyone who lends tacit support to such statements, or relativizes threats,” like, Dacic said, the Freedom and Justice Party had done, “is partially accountable.” “Such conduct legalizes the type of behavior which is absolutely unallowable. It is a severe criminal offense which is defined in all criminal codes. It is the duty of everyone to condemn such speech and such type of threats,” Dacic stressed.

He also said that “the threats targeted” the president’s son “who has nothing to do with politics,” stressing that “all children of the persons entitled to personal protection have their bodyguards.”

On July 8, the Freedom and Justice Party said “it is unbelievable to see in an EU candidate country that a critical opinion of the government endangering its citizens’ health is treated by the Prosecutor’s Office as endangering the safety of the president and his family members. It is the same president who, with his statements or actions of his associates, has been directly endangering the safety of opposition politicians and their families.”