The parents of a suspected teenage school shooter were to stand trial in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, from yesterday, after their son’s killing spree left 10 dead, including nine classmates.
The incident in May last year — along with a second shooting that occurred a day later — rocked the Balkan nation, setting off major demonstrations against the government that coalesced into an opposition coalition that stood in elections last month.
The trial comes after the Belgrade Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office charged the suspected shooter’s father in October last year for a “serious act against general safety.”
Photo: AFP
Prosecutors said that the father had trained his son to use firearms, practicing shooting and handling arms. The father also stands accused of not properly securing his weapons and ammunition, allowing the suspect to hide a handgun and 92 bullets in his backpack that he later used during the shooting.
The accused’s mother was charged with the illegal possession of ammunition.
Prosecutors have also charged the head of a Serbian shooting club and an instructor for providing false testimony.
The suspected shooter was just 13 years old at the time of the attack, making him not criminally liable under Serbian law.
Following the shootings, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic vowed to “disarm” the nation with an ambitious plan that would crack down on legal and illicit firearms in the nation. Despite the pledge, the shootings sparked massive anti-government protests across Serbian cities, as tens of thousands of demonstrators called for the resignation of top officials and the curtailing of violence in the media.
Vucic largely dismissed the protests as a “political” stunt and peddled conspiracy theories about foreign powers allegedly orchestrating the rallies.
Serbia has the highest level of gun ownership in Europe with more than 39 firearms for every 100 civilians, according to the Small Arms Survey project.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
RSS