Serbian Minister of the Interior Ivica Dacic announced a red code for terrorist danger in the country after the attack of a gendarme in front of the Israeli embassy in Belgrade yesterday, Serbian national TV RTS reported.
All units of the Ministry of the Interior of Serbia have been brought to the highest level of readiness and their task is to be visible in ensuring public order and peace and preventing possible terrorist acts, RTS clarifies, quoted by BTA and bTV.
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„This means that they will be in many places in Serbia. This is a preventive measure to prevent other actions. Sometimes terrorists know how to do so-called baiting, that is, to perform an action that is of a secondary type and then be followed by another primary action. The terrorist act was practically stopped at the beginning", explained Dacic.
He noted that critical locations are diplomatic and consular missions, state institutions, places where there are many people, the so-called critical infrastructure, then shopping centers, the city center, railway and bus stations.
A Serbian gendarme was shot in the neck with a crossbow yesterday in front of the Israeli embassy in Belgrade. He fired at his assailant, who died a short time later from his injuries. Serbian and Israeli authorities described the attack as an act of terrorism.
„There are people in Serbia who belong to the Wahhabi movement. It's one thing to monitor their activities, it's quite another when it comes to a specific crime – respectively, the terrorist attack on the gendarme Miloš Jevremović. An adequate cause-and-effect relationship must be found between the activities of the Wahhabis and the specific event”, Dacic explained.
He added that an extensive investigation is underway and two people are in custody – Igor Despotovic, arrested in Belgrade, and Kemal Begovic, who was arrested during a search in the town of Novi Pazar, where the attacker lives.
„There are other things – a video was found of one person pledging allegiance to the Islamic State with a knife in his hand. "When you see what these people have in their apartments, you understand that they are extremists," said Dacic.
„Many details are already clear to us. The movement of the terrorist from the station has been restored – he came from Mladenovac. He walked around the city, he went to the synagogue, there he saw the police and could not commit a terrorist act, so he went to the Israeli embassy, added the interior minister.
According to the Serbian interior minister, the attacker's initial target was the synagogue in Belgrade.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that Serbia is a safe country and citizens should not worry. According to him, there will be more arrests in the case and the investigation will be completed by Tuesday.