The prosecutor’s office asked for 12 years for the father of the Belgrade shooter

The Belgrade High Prosecutor’s Office is asking for the maximum punishment for the parents of a minor who shot students and a security guard at the school. Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade in May of this year.

Recently, the highest court of Serbia confirmed the legitimacy of the charges. The prosecutor’s office is asking for 12 years in prison for the child’s father – he is accused of a “serious crime against public safety.” According to investigators, the man taught the teenager how to use small arms, although “such activity and training” were not appropriate for his son’s age, and also did not ensure that the weapon was stored improperly.

The teenager’s mother has been charged with illegal possession and carrying of weapons and explosives; the prosecutor’s office is asking for 2.5 years for her. In addition, representatives of the Partizan shooting club are accused of giving false testimony in the case; the prosecutor’s office has requested three years in prison for them.

The school shooting, as well as the subsequent shooting in one of the Serbian villages (8 dead, 13 wounded) became an unprecedented incident not only for Serbia, but for the entire Balkans, notes the founder of the Balkanist project, Oleg Bondarenko. These events provoked a wave of public protests in Belgrade. Rallies of thousands, which began under the slogan “Serbia against violence,” grew into protests against the current authorities.

This was one of the reasons for Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to resign as leader of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. By the fall, he was forced to announce early parliamentary elections (to be held in the spring of 2024).

“The shooting of children at school was largely provoked by Serbian society, which is why the deadline for the shooter’s parents and the early elections were due to protests,” says Bondarenko.

It is hardly worth looking for a political motive in the fact that the shooter’s parents have been charged right now, on the eve of the start of the election campaign, Bondarenko believes. First of all, he says, this is “a matter of correcting mistakes, leveling out the tragedy that happened and its consequences.”

Serbian leader Vucic said that parliamentary and local elections in Belgrade and Vojvodina will take place on December 17, as the opposition demanded. The President of Serbia will sign the decree on the upcoming vote by November 2.

In the upcoming campaign, the ruling party of Serbia, according to Bondarenko, can simultaneously use the theses of European integration and friendship with Russia, economic development and security – as was the case in the last presidential campaign in the spring of 2022 against the backdrop of the outbreak of the armed conflict in Ukraine. “It will be a neo-Titov mix <...> In 2022, Vučić used the slogan “Peace. Stability. Vučić.” The authorities will probably continue to operate in this field,” he recalls.

In early May, a student at a Belgrade school, considered an elite school, started shooting at students using weapons brought from home. His victims were nine peers and a school security guard, and several people were injured. At the time of the crime, the shooter was under 14 years old, therefore, according to Serbian law, he could not be charged. Cases were filed against his parents.