Serbia’s interior minister Ivica Dačić said on state television on Thursday that the man who opened fire outside the parliament was not mentally unfit and that his motive was political, comments that critics said risked prejudging an ongoing investigation and blurred the line between official and partisan speech.
Speaking on RTS’s morning news programme about the shooting in front of the National Assembly tents, Dačić described the suspect’s actions as the result of political disagreement rather than mental illness.
“He is not insane, so you cannot attribute his behaviour to that. You heard his statements — he entered an argument because of political disagreement and fired shots. He fired multiple rounds; the police will determine how many. He threw the pistol into a tent. Forensics are working. The prosecutor has defined what happened; this is a prosecutorial investigation. The person came with the intent to commit violence against people who think differently; he brought a handgun,” Dačić said.
Dačić said the attacker must be “severely punished” to prevent similar incidents and warned against downplaying the event. He also urged people to appeal to reason and condemned rhetoric that encourages violence against political opponents.
Under Serbia’s Law on the Prevention of Corruption, public officials must make clear whether they are speaking in an official capacity or as representatives of a political party. Dačić, critics noted, did not specify in which role he was speaking while making factual assertions about matters still under investigation.
Former police colonel and opposition MP Slavica Radovanović accused both President Aleksandar Vučić and Dačić of acting to reassure their political base rather than to defer to investigators. She recalled previous high-profile cases in which she says authorities rushed to draw conclusions and said that senior officials disclosed personal details that should be protected under privacy law, including health information and assessments of the suspect’s mental state.
“There are procedural questions that should be left to experts, the police director or the prosecutor, not to headline-making political statements,” Radovanović said, adding that the media coverage by pro-government outlets had been “politically and personally improper.”
Other opposition figures were equally critical. Pavle Grbović said Vučić’s and his allies’ rhetoric was an example of how not to handle such incidents. Lawyer and opposition MP Jelena Pavlović accused authorities of seeking to manufacture public confusion and shift blame onto protesters, while former army chief Zdravko Ponoš and others described the handling of the incident and the government’s language as politically motivated.
The government narrative has also been bolstered by a detailed account read out by city officials and ministers describing the suspect and the sequence of events, including an official characterization of the episode as an act of terrorism — an assertion some legal experts and opponents say is premature pending a full probe.
The shooting, which occurred amid protests and a parliamentary debate over a European Parliament resolution, has deepened political tensions and intensified scrutiny of how Serbian authorities communicate facts in high-stakes incidents.