“Serbia’s President Calls for Disarmament and Death Penalty after Gun Attacks”

2023-05-05 16:00:17

After gun attacks

Serbia’s Vucic calls for the death penalty and “disarmament” of private individuals

After two fatal gun attacks within less than 48 hours, President Aleksandar Vucic’s government wants tougher penalties – and collect weapons on a large scale.

published5. May 2023, 18:00

After two deadly gun attacks, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic announced a comprehensive disarmament campaign – and marked toughness.

REUTERS

• After two deadly gun attacks in a very short space of time, Serbia is in shock.

• President Aleksandar Vucic has now announced a comprehensive disarmament campaign.

• He also called for the death penalty to be reintroduced, but the proposal was rejected by the rest of the government.

After two shattering gun attacks in Serbia in less than 48 hours, Head of State Aleksandar Vucic has announced a large-scale disarmament campaign for the Balkan state. “An almost complete disarmament” of private individuals is planned, said Vucic on Friday. On Wednesday, a 13-year-old shot nine people at a school in Belgrade, and on Friday night a young man shot eight people in several villages and injured 14 others.

“We will carry out an almost complete disarmament of Serbia,” Vucic said at a press conference. The campaign includes both the mass inspection of registered guns and increased action once morest illegal gun ownership. Hundreds of thousands of firearms were to be taken out of circulation in this way.

Vucic called for the death penalty to be reinstated

But Vucic wanted to go one step further, as reported by the APA news agency. The Serbian head of state had apparently called for the reintroduction of the death penalty. However, the government and Prime Minister Ana Brnabić spoke out once morest the proposal, pointing out that Serbia, along with Belarus, was the only country in Europe where the death penalty was possible.

According to government information, more than 760,000 firearms are registered in the country of 6.8 million people. Many weapons are also in circulation in the region as a result of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Guns and shooting ranges are popular in Serbia. However, a firearms license is a prerequisite for owning firearms.

Man shoots eight people from car

With the disarmament campaign, Vucic draws the consequences of two terrible bloody deeds. On Friday night, eight people were killed and 14 others injured than one Man fired from a moving car near the town of Mladenovac.

Around midnight, the 21-year-old attacker shot people who were staying in a schoolyard in the village of Dubona, around 60 kilometers south of the capital Belgrade, with a rapid-fire weapon. After that, he also shot at people in the villages of Malo Orasje and Sepsin and then fled, as reported by TV channel RTS.

13-year-old kills nine people at school

Only on Wednesday had a 13-year-old student in his school in Belgrade eight children and a security guard shot dead and seven other people injured. The 13-year-old was arrested and taken to a psychiatric hospital.

According to investigators, he had prepared a detailed plan and death list before committing his crime. The boy’s father, who owned the murder weapon, was arrested. The mother was also taken into custody.

Gun attacks are extremely rare in Serbia. After Wednesday’s tragedy, President Vucic spoke of “one of the hardest days” in the recent past. Hundreds of people laid flowers and toys and lit candles in front of the school in Belgrade. In the Croatian capital of Zagreb and in Banja Luka, the capital of the Serbian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, people also commemorated the dead with flowers and candles.

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(AFP/bho)View Comments

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