January 16, 2019
The Interior Ministry of Serbia has confirmed the arrest of the person who attempted to break into the flat of journalist Milan Jovanović on 30th December last year, but they emphasised that this break-in was not directed against the journalist, nor is it connected with the arson attack on that journalist’s house.
Jovanović, who wrote about abuses of power in the local government for local portal zig.info, saw his house in the Belgrade suburb of Vrčin destroyed in a devastated fire that was deliberately set at around 3am on the morning of 12th December. Jovanović subsequently relocated to a rented apartment in Belgrade, which was targetted by a burglar just three days after he moved in. Following the attempted break-in, he received police protection for a period of 24 hours
The police announced that the suspected perpetrator of the break-in was arrested along with another person in connection with the theft of copper guttering from a building, and is suspected of involvement in several other burglaries around Belgrade. He was arrested on the basis of criminal charges filed with the competent prosecutor’s office, after which he was remanded into custody.
Jovanović told portal Cenzolovka that he was aware that the persons who had attempted to break into his apartment had been found, but that he felt as though the entire investigation in his case is “progressing slowly”.
Even before it was announced that the attempted break-in had nothing to do with the journalist whose house was set ablaze, Serbian President Vučić said in an interview for portal Espreso that the first results of the investigation show that the attempt to break into the apartment where journalist Jovanović was resident was an attempt to burglar the apartment, which hadn’t previously been occupied for a long time.
