Serbian Parties Battle Over Footage of Attack

Footage of Sunday's hooligan-style attack on members of the opposition Democratic Party, has fuelled a war of words between the opposition Democrats and the ruling Progressive Party that symbolises the emptiness of the Serbian election campaign, an expert has said.

Vladimir Milutinovic, a Belgrade political analyst, told BIRN that this type of "fighting over nothing" reflected the fact that the election campaigns of all the main parties were devoid of real content - but said it also suggested that the Progressives were less certain of a convincing victory than polls suggest.

Democratic Party members were attacked at a party meeting in Belgrade by four men, one of who tried to use a broken bottle. The event was captured on a video, which was released the next day.

After Sunday's incident, Serbian police arrested all four assailants who apparently have thick criminal records and are known for their ultra-nationalist views.

However, having condemned the incident itself, Prime Minister and Progressive Party leader Aleksandar Vucic on Monday complained that the video footage had been edited.

Vucic said the police told him on Monday that the footage had been cut short and important parts deleted.

The Democrats then responded by publishing the unedited video footage, and accused Vucic of creating "an atmosphere of lynch and violence and hate speech in every statement".

On Tuesday, Democrat Party leader Bojan Pajtic said that Sunday's attack was "the 97th consecutive attack on members of the Democratic Party in four years".

He added that law enforcement institutions had only reacted to it "because there was video footage and it was not possible to avoid reacting".

Milutinovic, the political analyst, told BIRN that the...

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