On the night of April 24, 2016, the day when parliamentary and local elections were held in Serbia, several private buildings were demolished in Savamala, in the place where Belgrade on the water is today.
According to the custodian of the buildings and the only eyewitness, who died a month later, the buildings were demolished by a group of people masked as “phantoms”, with excavators and clubs, who had previously taken his phone and tied him up.
The authorities claim that illegal buildings were demolished in Hercegovačka Street and that nothing illegal happened, while according to the opinion of activists and the opposition, “the rule of law was destroyed” that night.
The prime minister at the time, now the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, said then that the “highest authorities of the city government” were behind the demolitions, whom he called “complete idiots” because they were demolishing illegal buildings at night, not during the day.
The mayor of Belgrade at the time was the current Minister of Finance, Siniša Mali, and the Minister of the Interior, Nebojša Stefanović, who, after the affair with the alleged wiretapping of President Aleksandar Vučić, first resigned as a member of the SNS Presidency and then retired from the political scene.
The sole person responsible for the demolition in Savamala was the head of the Belgrade Police Duty Service, Goran Stamenković, who was sentenced to a five-month suspended sentence for “reckless work”, that is, the police’s failure to respond that night despite numerous calls from citizens.
A few years later, he said that on the night of the demolition, he received an order not to act from his superior, the head of the Belgrade Police Duty Service, Zvonko Kostić, and that the top police force forced him to confess his guilt.
Tags: years demolition Savamala gave order complete idiots unknown
