Vucic: Returned Passengers Are Not Criminals, Came for a Good Time
Serbia's president responds for the first time to the turned-back charter passengers in Tivat and plays down the incident, while Montenegro stands by its security-threat assessment.
- Vucic responds publicly for the first time to the turned-back charter passengers in Tivat and plays down the incident.
- The president claims the returned citizens are not criminals, but people who came because of him.
- Montenegrin police earlier turned back 87 Serbian citizens, citing a security threat.
- Montenegro's prime minister, Milojko Spajic, argues a foreign-policy factor is interfering for the first time.
Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, has spoken publicly for the first time about the charter-flight passengers turned back in Tivat, and he played the incident down. In Tivat on June 4, at around 6.46 p.m., answering reporters’ questions, he said the deported passengers were not criminals, N1 reports. With that, the president sided with a group of citizens whom Montenegrin police had assessed days earlier as a security threat.
According to the same source, Vucic said the situation could have been settled calmly had someone told him in time to move aside, as he put it, those young men who, in his words, had come so that he would have a good time. The president’s assessment and Montenegro’s assessment stand opposed to each other and represent the positions of the two sides, not established facts about who was right.
“The returned passengers are not criminals, they came for a good time,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told reporters in Tivat, according to N1.
What is confirmed, and what are the two sides’ assessments?
What is confirmed is that Montenegrin police had earlier turned back a group of 87 Serbian citizens, stating they were assessed as a security threat. That is the factual basis the two sides agree on, while they diverge on who these people are and why they came.
Everything that follows is an assessment, not a proven claim. The Montenegrin side builds its position on a description of the passengers, and the Serbian side on the president’s statement that these were people who came because of him. Three points help separate the confirmed from the interpretation:
- Vucic claims the returned passengers are not criminals, but his guests.
- Montenegrin police state they turned the group back as a security threat.
- Vukasin Obradovic, editor of the Podgorica daily Vijesti, described the passengers as uniformly dressed, heavily built and tattooed.
How does Podgorica read the background to the incident?
Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milojko Spajic offered an assessment that places the incident in a wider political frame. According to Radio Free Europe, Spajic argues that, for the first time, a foreign-policy factor and organised criminal groups are interfering against Montenegro’s European path. That claim is the prime minister’s assessment, not a judicially or investigatively established fact.
The opposing assessments from Belgrade and Podgorica remain unreconciled. The Serbian side sees the incident as an unnecessary, easily resolved misunderstanding, while the Montenegrin government reads it as a security and geopolitical matter. Without a shared version of events, each side defends its position with its own account of the same passengers.
After these conflicting assessments, will the two states find common ground on what actually happened in Tivat?
