Ombudsman releases police documents

Ombudsman releases police documents

BELGRADE -- Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic has released some of the documents of the Interior Ministry(MUP) about the incident during the Pride Parade in Belgrade.

Based on these he pressed criminal charges against two members of the Military Police. On September 28 last year, they clashed with members of the MUP Gendarmerie unit.

The incident involved the Gendarmes on one side, and the brother of the Serbian prime minister, Andrej Vucic, the brother of the Belgrade mayor, and their security - two members of the Military Police, on the other.

The conclusions about the initiation of disciplinary proceedings and the report of the Interior Ministry's internal control department about inquiries ordered by the first prosecutor's office of original jurisdiction in Belgrade can be found on the website, Beta reported.

The ombudsman also stated that the documents he published provided facts to refute the veracity of a statement made by Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic, who said on Wednesday that "the presented claims about the incident exist only in the statements of the Gendarmerie members."

Earlier on Thursday, the minister said that "only documents signed by the accused members of the Gendarmerie can have official character," while there was "no document with the signature of the one MUP organ with jurisdiction to implement lawfulness, which is the Internal Control Sector."

The ombudsman's website said that the Internal Sector Control documents now published contain witness statements coming from citizens (rather than the suspended Gendarmes), who said members of the Military Security Agency (VBA) interviewed them, and that they also confiscated footage from security cameras from...