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🇷🇸 Serbia /Crime & Justice

Užice protest held five days after SNS rally violence, with no arrests

From N1 Serbia · () Serbian

Translated from Serbian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Under investigation
  • Citizens protested in Užice after five days passed without arrests over filmed assaults before a rally by Serbia’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
  • Lawyers representing citizens submitted video footage, evidence, and names of suspected attackers to prosecutors and filed a criminal complaint.
  • Attorney Mirko Filipović accused police and prosecutors of inaction and alleged that authorities apply different standards depending on whether suspects support the ruling regime.

Five days after violence before a Serbian Progressive Party rally in Užice, no one filmed beating a citizen had been arrested. No arrests had been made in other cases in which citizens said security personnel hired by the ruling party physically attacked them.

The lack of action brought citizens to the offices of the prosecutor and the police department. Lawyers who had represented people involved in clashes with police decided to submit video footage, other evidence, and the names of people they had identified in the recordings. They also filed a criminal complaint, signed by several civic associations, against unidentified persons and people identified by lawyers and witnesses.

The most troubling issue in this whole story is that the police did not react, with exceptions.

· Mirko FilipovićThe attorney criticized police inaction after alleged assaults connected to the SNS rally.

Attorney Mirko Filipović said the most troubling issue was that police had not intervened. He said people suspected of injuring citizens at the rally remained free in the town square despite the presence of more than 50 police officers. According to Filipović, police did not identify or detain them.

No one identified them, no one detained them. It was as if they knew they would be pardoned if they did it.

· Mirko FilipovićFilipović described what he said was the authorities’ failure to act against suspected attackers.

Filipović said prosecutors should already have taken action and sought detention if the alleged crimes had disturbed the public. He said the prosecutor assigned to the case told him that the investigation was under way and was seeking original recordings and mobile phones. A woman had already provided a phone containing footage, he said.

He contrasted this with a protest last year in which citizens broke through a police cordon without injuring anyone. Social-media footage had then been enough for people to be detained and, initially, placed in custody, including some who were later found not to have been present. Filipović called this a double standard based on whether people support the regime. He added that some of the alleged attackers have criminal records.

There is a double standard, depending on whether you support this regime or not.

· Mirko FilipovićHe compared the handling of the Užice violence with arrests after an earlier police-cordon incident.
About this summary

Originally published by N1 Serbia in Serbian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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