Four years after barbaric demolition of houses in Belgrade, culprits unknown

N1

Four years after masked men savagely destroyed private houses in downtown Belgrade apparently to make way for Serbia – UAE Belgrade Waterfront construction, "we all feel like idiots," Senka Vlatkovic Odavic, a journalist, told N1 on Friday, alluding to the words by the then Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic immediately after the event.

In the night between April 24-25, 2016, a group of unknown men wearing ski masks and using heavy machinery demolished the houses in a street in Savamala district, tied up people and confiscated their mobile phones after some unsuccessfully tried to call the police to intervene.

At the time, Vucic, now the head of state, said that only idiots could do that and that the top city officials were responsible.

Four years later, the perpetrators and masterminds remain unknown.

Sometime after the event, a security worker died from a heart issue and the event triggered widespread protests.

„Only one man, a deputy police chief on duty that night, was convicted. He couldn’t have been the only one responsible for deciding about anything even if he wanted to,“ Vlatkovic Odavic, a journalist with the Insajder independent production, said.

She added that the procedure was still in the pre-investigative phase.

„It was not difficult to determine who ordered that, who were those masked men with heavy machines,“ she said, adding that the police and prosecutors had been passing the ball in each other’s yard.“

The  Chief Public Prosecutor Zagorka Dolovac hasn’t commented on the destruction so far.

According to Vlatkovic Odavic,  the Savamala case „is the most obvious example“ of the deterioration of the rule of law.

„Four years later, we all feel like idiots,“ Vlatkovic Odavic said.