Serbia: President Vučić wants to reintroduce the death penalty

After two scattered gun attacks in Serbia within 48 hours, President Aleksandar Vucic announced a massive disarmament campaign for the Balkan state. Vucic said on Friday that “almost complete disarmament” of private individuals is planned. On Wednesday, a 13-year-old boy shot and killed nine people at a school in Belgrade, and on Friday night a teenager shot dead eight people and wounded 14 in several villages.

“We will carry out an almost complete disarmament of Serbia,” Vucic told a press conference. The campaign includes both mass inspections of registered firearms and increased action against illegal gun ownership. Hundreds of thousands of firearms must be removed from circulation in this way.

Vucic called for the reinstatement of the death penalty

But Vucic wanted to go a step further, APA news agency reported. The Serbian head of state has openly called for the reintroduction of the death penalty. However, the government and Prime Minister Ana Brnabić spoke out against the proposal, pointing out that Serbia, along with Belarus, is the only country in Europe with the possibility of the death penalty.

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

Man shoots eight people from car

Through the disarmament campaign, Vucic charts the consequences of two horrific acts of bloodshed. On Friday night, eight people were killed and 14 injured A man opened fire from a moving car near the town of Mladenovac.

In the middle of the night, the 21-year-old assailant opened fire on people staying at the school in Dubona village, 60 kilometers south of the capital Belgrade. After that, he also shot people in the villages of Malo Orasje and Cepsin and fled, TV channel RTS reported.

13-year-old boy kills nine people at school

A. on Wednesday only A 13-year-old student at his school in Belgrade with eight children and a guardian was shot dead and seven wounded. A 13-year-old boy was arrested and taken to a psychiatric hospital.

According to investigators, he had He prepared a detailed plan and death list before committing his crime. The boy’s father was arrested for possessing the murder weapon. The mother was also arrested.

Gun attacks are extremely rare in Serbia. After Wednesday’s tragedy, President Vučić called it “one of the hardest days” in recent memory. Hundreds of people laid flowers, toys and lit candles in front of a school in Belgrade. In Croatia’s capital Zagreb and Republika Srpska’s capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Banja Luka, people remembered the dead with flowers and candles.

(AFP/bho)See comments