Serbian President Denies Threatening to Kill Croatian War Prisoner
Aleksandar Vucic at a push convention in Belgrade in early October. Image: EPA-EFE/ANDREJ CUKIC.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic on Friday turned down promises that he participated in a war criminal offense in Croatia in 1991, soon after a Croatian newspaper claimed that a demo witness testified that Vucic threatened him with dying.
Vucic told media in Belgrade that he was in Croatia various periods in the 1970s and 1980s as a little one and a teenager, but not in 1991.
He explained he did not go to Croatia in the course of the war “all the way right up until the finish of 1994 or 1995, when I went as an SRS [Serbian Radical Party] official, for two days, when we went on a [election] campaign in [Serb rebel-held] Serbian Krajina”.
He also mentioned that he had “never been to Petrinja [where the prisoner was captured] in the entire of my everyday living, never”.
Croatian newspaper Vecernji Checklist noted on Thursday that a witness that it named as Kosta D. explained to a war crimes trial in Zagreb that Vucic was current when he was captured in September 1991 and threatened to eliminate him.
The witness said that “I recall when the recent president of Serbia, Vucic, as if I ended up observing him now, came up to us and explained that he would kill and slaughter”, Vecernji Listing reported.
“Vucic advised me that, as a Serb, I experienced betrayed the Serbian persons and that he would slaughter me last,” he added.
The witness was testifying at the demo of Serb ex-fighters Dusan Jovic, Milo Paspalj, Vlado Cupovic and Marko Vrcelj, for war crimes in opposition to civilians and prisoners of war in 1991 in the Glina area, where Petrinja is positioned. They are staying experimented with in their absence.
Vucic mentioned that during this period, he was a college student and that his political occupation only started out in 1993 when he joined the Serbian Radical Get together.
He argued that in Croatia, “some people today are attempted on the foundation of the testimonies of these witnesses – consider how these individuals will finish up, on the foundation of these brutal and heinous lies”.
His accuser’s testimony was claimed by one more newspaper, Jutarnji Listing, which also posted a assertion by one more witness who said he saw one of the defendants, as effectively as witness Kosta D., even though he was in captivity, but did not see Vucic there.
For the duration of very first 50 {2099cc1b97d4d5af6b378c51833a8c0e04bb5da587377bd6b2cb473fa3104767} of 1990s, the Serbian Radical Occasion was energetic in spreading nationalistic rhetoric, but some of its users were also concerned in the conflict o the ground, in Croatia and later on in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Serbian Radical Occasion leader Vojislav Seselj was convicted in 2018 of inciting crimes with nationalist speeches that he made in the Vojvodina location of Serbia through the war in 1992.
Vucic, along with celebration vice-president Tomislav Nikolic, remaining the Serbian Radical Bash in 2008 and shaped the Serbian Progressive Celebration, which has been in electric power considering that 2012.
