Attack on Vučić in Potočari: In Serbia, accreditations distributed for secret filming of commemoration

Former members of the Observation and Documentation Department (OOD) of the Serbian Ministry of Interior, Milan Dumanović and Mladen Trbović, have filed a criminal complaint against the police leadership for abuse of office and influence peddling. As an immediate cause, they cited the illegal presence of members of that department at the commemoration of the victims of the Srebrenica genocide in 2015 in Potočari, reported Al Jazeera, as carried by the Patria news agency.

 

Dumanović and Trbović filed a complaint against Dejan Milenković, head of the Service for Special Investigative Methods, Goran Nešić, head of the OOD, Tomislav Radovanović, deputy head of the OOD, and Dijana Hrkalović, secretary of the Criminal Police Directorate.

Dumanović said he received an oral order to go to Potočari early in the morning on the day of the commemoration. He stated that he went to Srebrenica with 18 other colleagues. The task was to secretly film the commemorative gathering.

“We had credentials, ‘Srebrenica 2015’ was written on them. These were credentials held by the security personnel of the gathering itself, and we held the cameras in our hands, we did not hide them. At some point, our deputy chief Tomica Radovanović brought us those credentials. From whom he took them and who gave them to him, I really do not know,” said Dumanović. He and department head Goran Nešić can be seen in footage of the commemoration in Potočari available on the internet.

The Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina learned about this case from the media. Minister Dragan Mektić said that members of foreign security agencies cannot be on any task on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina without the knowledge and approval of the competent domestic services.

“Apart from the reported security, we had no other announcements, nor did we have any knowledge at that time that anyone was present outside that security,” said Mektić.

The Patria agency investigated who was all in Potočari on that July 11, 2015. The answer was also hidden in some older statements by the Minister of Interior of Republika Srpska, Dragan Lukač. He revealed to the media on April 6, 2016:

- The Ministry of Interior of Republika Srpska was engaged in securing Vučić from his entry into Bosnia and Herzegovina until the entrance to the cemetery, which was under the jurisdiction of the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Lukač said then, and admitted that he nevertheless insisted that RS police officers in civilian clothes be present in the crowd at the cemetery.

How many of his men were in the crowd remained unknown? Among the police officers from RS, it was said that more than 40 members of the RS Ministry of Interior were inside the cemetery in Potočari. However, a serious question remains: If they had no jurisdiction, what were they even doing there?

In the footage from Potočari, a special forces officer from RS, Goran Paraš, was also identified. He was arrested in September for participation in an armed robbery of approximately 616,548.25 KM, when a van of “Unicredit Bank” Banja Luka was intercepted. This unprecedented highway robbery was carried out on the Banja Luka - Bosanska Gradiška highway. According to the footage, one such highway robber was located in the immediate vicinity of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić during his stay in Potočari.

Lukač admitted that this robber of Unicredit Bank participated in securing Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić during the commemoration in Srebrenica on July 11, 2015, but, Lukač claims, he did his job professionally at the time.

It was shocking to hear Lukač treat the participant in the highway robbery, Paraš, as a professional, especially while another criminal act was taking place in Potočari.

Yet, he was more of a professional during the highway robbery, in uniform and with a weapon. Patria has proven numerous subsequent manipulations in the footage of the attack on Vučić. It was suspected that the falsifications and reconstructions of the footage of the attack on Prime Minister Vučić were carried out, apparently, in one of the new services of the RS Ministry of Interior.