
A man who drove at high speed into a crowd of student protesters, leaving a 20-year-old woman seriously injured, faces charges of attempted murder, prosecutors said.
The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade said it will prosecute a male identified by the initials M.P. for aggravated attempted murder, saying it suspects that he rammed a 20-year-old student with his car in Belgrade on Thursday during a memorial for the 15 victims of the Novi Sad railway station disaster.
He will be held in detention for up to 48 hours until the next decision is made.
The University Clinical Centre of Serbia said the young victim was admitted “in a conscious state” and is “communicative and in a stable general condition”.
The incident happened near several Belgrade University student faculties. According to N1 television, students were preparing to block an intersection for 15 minutes when the car crashed into them. The young women who was hit was standing on the pavement.
A video shows the car moving at high speed, hitting the women and then carrying her on the roof without slowing down. The woman later fell off the roof and the driver escaped.
This was the most serious in a series of attacks on students and citizens who have been protesting each days and blocking roads for 15 minutes in memory of the victims of the Novi Sad station disaster on November 1.
Pro-government media and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic have sought to play down the incidents.
On December 1, 2024, Vucic dismissed complaints about a similar event in the town of Pozarevac, where a man drove through a crowd of people and carried one person along on his car for a couple of metres.
Vucic said the driver should not be arrested as he just “went his own way”.
“How can you arrest a man who has not broken the law? That man went his own way … You stood in someone’s way and told him … ‘I will not let you pass’. And the man went past. And you jump on his car and you say: ‘Arrest the one who was driving the car’. Are you out of your mind?” Vucic said.
In some cases, perpetrators were arrested but no information has been made public about whether they were held in custody afterwards.
Commemorative silent protests lasting 15 minutes have been held in Belgrade, Novi Sad and other towns across the country ever since the external canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed on November 1, leaving 15 people dead.
At one protest in front of the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts, FDU, on November 22, students and professors were physically attacked while staging a memorial blockade. This triggered more blockades that later expanded to an almost total blockade of all university premises in Serbia.