Vucic and “assassinations”: what is forensically unusual about the recent tyre explosion on the Serbian President’s car?

“Assassination of Aleksandar Vucic” “Almost a terrible tragedy”, thundered the pro-regime media in Serbia when the tyre of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s official car recently burst on the road to Mokrin (a town in Vojvodina), where the SNS was organizing a rally.

A video of the tyre burst quickly went viral, raising questions as to whether it was a coincidence, given that Vucic and the media under his control always resort to theatrics and dramatisation when the President is confronted with a problem, or whether his safety was really at risk.

After the incident, Mr Vucic got into another vehicle and continued his tour of the Central Banat district. In his first statement to Informer TV after the incident, Vucic said that after visiting Melenets on the road to Mokrin, the tyre on the vehicle had burst.

Recall that the Presidency had earlier confirmed to Tanjug that “the vehicle in which the President was riding did not in fact have a tyre burst, but the whole wheel fell off”.

“Let me give you some clarifications. So, whether it’s a flat tyre, a blowout with all the tyres, or what I mean, or God knows what else, that’s for the authorities to determine, and they will determine that. I came to Mokrin and got into another car,” Vucic told Informer TV.

As can be seen from the footage taken by the camera of the escort vehicle, the left rear tyre burst.

The vehicle immediately stopped and the first to get out were the Cobra officers guarding the President, followed immediately by the President himself, who got out and got into the other vehicle behind.

What is forensically unusual about the incident in the video, which shows a tyre burst on the vehicle of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, which was then portrayed in the government-controlled media as ‘sabotage’?

Veselin Medojevic, a retired military police officer and an expert in this field, wrote about this case on his social networks.

“The vehicle in which the President is in first moves from its lane to the middle of the motorway as if preparing for an event, looking for a position from which the driver will reduce the already low risk of running off the road.” “The driver seems to be expecting a flat tyre,” Medojevic points out.

Then, as this expert writes, the person sitting in the passenger seat of the car in which the President was riding immediately approached the left rear wheel, knowing in advance what it was and which wheel it was. She has no regard for the other wheels; she is not in any way visually controlling the vehicle.

No observation of surroundings

Another unusual situation occurred when everyone got out of the vehicle without observing the surroundings, which Medojević said is the first activity of insuring a high-security person, especially if the event is unexpected.

“Stopping in an unplanned location requires checking the terrain by observation.” “But security behaves as if the stop is at a planned location – they don’t notice anything, even when they later open the vehicle door for the President to get out,” explains the retired officer.

Just a tyre bursting in such a way that the whole tyre falls off is extremely rare, he says, “especially in vehicles that are regularly serviced, inspected, have regular tyre changes and certainly don’t use cheap tyres”.

Unusual behaviour from the President

He then explains that the behaviour of the Serbian President himself is also strange. He gets out of the car without any questions or explanations, even though no one tells him anything, the President somehow knows what has happened and what he has to do.

“The President knows specifically that he has to change to another vehicle, even though no one tells him or instructs him to do so,” Medojevic writes.

He adds that Vucic gets out of the car fully prepared, dressed, even with his coat buttoned.

Controversial security actions

Experts further note that the flat tyre is not as problematic as the actions of the President’s security guards after his vehicle stopped on the open road.

Ljuba Milanović, a retired Ministry of the Interior inspector, believes that the burst tyre on the President’s car is not something that should be the subject of a separate story, but that the behaviour of the security guards after the burst tyre is something that could be discussed.

“I was surprised by the behaviour of the security guards after the incident while driving. I was immediately struck by the fact that there were only two vehicles in the escort, not three, which is the usual practice when transporting a protected person. In an escort of three cars, the protected person should have been in another escort vehicle,” Milanovic told Belgrade Danas.

He states that the President’s security detail moved the President from one vehicle to another rather nonchalantly.

“This is particularly symptomatic, considering that we live in a tension created by the President himself.” If, as he claims, your life is already in such serious danger, as well as those close to him, two vehicles are not enough. “The vehicle did stop because of a flat tyre, which was probably cut by a sharp stone on the asphalt and then the tread separated because the vehicle was heavy and armoured, but the security guard in the car behind could not have known for sure at that moment,” Milanović said.

The former inspector explains that the security services should have taken a more serious approach to transferring Vučić to another vehicle.

“The security officers should have first exited the vehicle and surrounded the car in which the protected person was, and not allowed Vučić to leave the vehicle until they were absolutely sure that it was safe to exit. He got out almost immediately and no one escorted him to the other car. At the moment he got out of the car, another vehicle came from the opposite direction, which they did not pay attention to,” says Milanović.

He believes that although it was obvious that there was no assault on the escort, there are protocols in such situations.

“Security in such situations must always be based on the assumption that there is a risk to the protected person, even when it may be obvious that there is not.” “In this case, it seemed to me that they were led by the opposite thought – and they reacted accordingly, as we have seen,” Milanović believes.

When does a tyre burst while driving?

Tibor Bodolo, mechanical engineer and forensic expert, explains when tyres burst while driving.

“There are three ways a tyre can burst while driving: hitting a hard or sharp object on the road, hitting a pothole in the road, or due to a technical defect or other irregularity in the tyre itself. The exact cause of a tyre burst in a particular case can only be determined by a professional tyre inspection. However, the very composition of a car tyre makes it sometimes very difficult to determine how the damage was caused, as a tyre is not a hard object where there are clearly visible signs of a puncture or a crack,” Tibor Bodolo told Danas.

The investigation into this incident is not being conducted by the Ministry of the Interior, but by the Ministry of Defence, which is also responsible for the President’s security.

/The Geopost