Radar: Traditional Serbian hospitality

Thank goodness we have an honest president, willing to publicly confirm to what extent the Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) is incompetent, so, without feeling the least bit uncomfortable, he shared with us the information that Milo Zujovic (Salahudin), who attacked a gendarme outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade with a crossbow, was closely monitored under the “terrorism indicative” category. Considering such operational capabilities, we could tolerate the fact that the BIA routinely issues bans of entry into Serbia due to “security risks,” because who knows how many people the BIA could lose track of while they are buying or using crossbows. However, looking at the selection of those who have been denied entry into the country, the situation becomes somewhat peculiar, said Radar.

It said that last week actor and writer Fedja Stukan was detained at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport and then deported before achieving his goal - threatening Serbia’s security by participating in the Krokodil festival. Despite the fact that he did not face criminal charges and committed no offense that would constitute a threat, the state exercised its discretionary power and sent him back to Sarajevo without any explanation.

The organizers of the festival turned to the Ombudsman as the only one who can request access to confidential documents justifying such swiftly imposed bans, but received a reply stating that “they will make a note of it.” Fortunately, said Radar, while the Office of the Ombudsman was taking time to diligently “make notes,” the truth was published on the X social media platform with the help of bots. “Alija Izetbegovic's sniper, Fedja Stukan, was detained today at the Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade! Attack, our militia!,” one of them wrote, illustrating this with a “wartime” photo of Stukan, yet failing to mention that it was taken from the film “So Hot Was The Cannon.”

The weekly said that, at the beginning of last month, after he had waited for eight hours at the Belgrade airport, Roman Perl, a Russian-Israeli journalist working on a joint project of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe called “Current Time”, was handed an order blocking his entry into the country. It read that his entry into Serbia would pose a security risk. And no, he did not “trample on Serbia’s dignity” in any way, but he did do something far worse – in Belgrade he interviewed a citizens outside the Russian Embassy who had unfolded a Ukrainian flag. He was arrested at the time, but it was never explained whether it is a crime to talk to someone carrying a flag, other than to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic at the UN, or whether this has to do with the fact that Perl has been on the foreign agents list in Russia since 2021.

The latter is more likely, commented Reporters Without Borders (RSF), saying they were “dismayed” by the fact that Russia can compel Serbian authorities to do whatever it wants. The RSF recalled the case of filmmaker Andrei Gnyot, whose deportation to Belarus has been announced, and the case of Natasha Tyshkevich, the former editor of the Russian student newspaper DOXA, who was detained at the Belgrade airport for two days before being sent back to Malta.

Unfortunately, said the weekly, independent journalists are not the only problem, but also all Russians who are not fervent supporters of Putin, so nowadays expulsion orders are frequently handed out in Serbia, even to entire families who have been living in the country for years without posing any threat to anyone's security. The Terekh family received a notice stating they are no longer allowed to stay in Serbia, without any mention of the reasons why they are believed to be a “risk.” Unofficially, it has emerged that the problem is not only Sergei Terekh's Ukrainian origin but also the fact that their family hotel occasionally accommodates Ukrainian guests.

The height of BIA’s arrogance was demonstrated in the case of Russian anti-war activist Ilya Zernov, said Radar. Even though he was invited by a court as a damaged party after being physically assaulted in Belgrade a few months earlier by pro-Russian hooligans when he was erasing graffiti that said “Death to Ukraine,” he was denied entry into Serbia from Germany with the same kind of explanation. Zernov said at the time that one of the attackers was Misa Vacic, who has denied the accusations. We will obviously never learn the truth, as the service took preventive measures to ensure that.