Serbian presidency faces grenade threat
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Daily News with wires
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Mayıs 22, 2009 00:00
BELGRADE - A man with a hand grenade entered the Serbian president's headquarters yesterday and threatened to detonate the device if his court case is not settled within the day, officials said. President Boris Tadic's office said the leader entered the building after the standoff began, but it would not say why he went into the building, where SWAT teams were dealing with the situation.
The man, identified by one official as a bankrupt businessman, is seated in a small lobby at a side entrance, surrounded by shielded policemen pointing guns at him while negotiators tried to persuade him to surrender, Belgrade's independent B-92 radio said. Many people were still inside the building, including office workers, as Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review went to press yesterday. Police stopped all traffic in the busy downtown area, according to a report by The Associated Press. Security people in the lobby had taken away one grenade from the middle-aged man, but he still was holding a second grenade with its pin removed, said Jasmina Stojanov, Tadic's press office spokeswoman.
She could not say what the man's motive was. But another government official identified him as Dragan Maric, 57, and said he had announced his plan in an e-mail sent to various government addresses. Maric said in an e-mail that he would blow himself up if a court did not rule in his favor in an unspecified case by 4 p.m. (1400 GMT). After the deadline passed, there was no sound from the building, which is in a park across from the parliament building.
Maric, once a wealthy businessman, has staged several public hunger strikes since his company went bankrupt in the early 2000s. In 2004, he threatened to burn himself alive. "Even death is better than tyranny," the man said in the e-email, according to the official, who refused to be named because she was not entitled to discuss the incident.
The incident follows U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit Wednesday to Belgrade, which nationalists opposed. The United States recognized Kosovo's declared independence from Serbia last year, a change Serbia has vowed never to accept. Biden received a hero’s welcome yesterday in Kosovo and Pristina awarded the vice president with a medal.
She could not say what the man's motive was. But another government official identified him as Dragan Maric, 57, and said he had announced his plan in an e-mail sent to various government addresses. Maric said in an e-mail that he would blow himself up if a court did not rule in his favor in an unspecified case by 4 p.m. (1400 GMT). After the deadline passed, there was no sound from the building, which is in a park across from the parliament building.
Maric, once a wealthy businessman, has staged several public hunger strikes since his company went bankrupt in the early 2000s. In 2004, he threatened to burn himself alive. "Even death is better than tyranny," the man said in the e-email, according to the official, who refused to be named because she was not entitled to discuss the incident.
The incident follows U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit Wednesday to Belgrade, which nationalists opposed. The United States recognized Kosovo's declared independence from Serbia last year, a change Serbia has vowed never to accept. Biden received a hero’s welcome yesterday in Kosovo and Pristina awarded the vice president with a medal.