Belgrade: two young men seriously injured in attack near Beton Hala, five suspects sought

The Belgrade City Police Administration launched Operation Vihor around one o’clock after midnight on 24 May, following an attack on three young men in a car park near Beton Hala on Vojvode Bojovica Boulevard, according to a report by the daily Telegraf based on police sources. On the order of Belgrade’s Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office, a pre-criminal investigation has been opened against an unknown person.

Two of those injured, aged 19 and 20, suffered serious stab wounds to the abdomen and were rushed to the red zone of Belgrade’s Emergency Centre, where they underwent surgery. A third young man suffered injuries to his hand from a bladed weapon while trying to defend himself, according to media reports citing sources in the Emergency Centre’s surgical department.

According to a statement, Interior Ministry officers blocked key arterial roads and exits from that part of the city, and the search is focused on a group of five people who fled the scene after the stabbing. Around 4am, traffic police located a vehicle reasonably suspected of having been used in the escape, Telegraf reports. It is a Citroen C4 with Belgrade plates.

Belgrade’s Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office had, at the time of writing, not issued an official statement with a procedural qualification of the offence, nor had it stated how many people had been brought to the prosecutor’s office for questioning. In past similar cases, the prosecutor’s office has qualified such acts as a serious offence against public traffic safety or as grievous bodily harm, depending on the assessment of the medical expert’s findings.

The offence of grievous bodily harm under Article 121 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Serbia carries a prison sentence of six months to five years. Where the bodily harm is qualified as life-threatening, the statutory sentence is one to eight years. If the prosecutor’s office finds intent to take a life, the act would be reclassified as attempted murder under Article 113 of the Criminal Code, with a sentence of five to fifteen years.

Operation Vihor is a standard Interior Ministry protocol that establishes control over the entry and exit roads of a part of the city, with the aim of preventing the escape of suspects. The operation is usually wound up either when the suspects are deprived of their liberty or when it is established that they have left the blockade area.

A source close to the investigation, whose name Telegraf does not provide, said the attack may have been the consequence of an earlier argument between two groups of young men in a venue on Vojvode Bojovica Boulevard. This assessment has not been officially confirmed by the prosecutor’s office, which stressed that the motive has not yet been established procedurally.

The next procedural step is the submission of reports by traffic and criminal police to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office, which will decide on any arrest and on the proposal of procedural coercive measures. The prosecutor’s office has not announced when an official statement is expected.