President Milanović Calls on Prime Minister to Present Forensic Investigation Findings on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Crash in Zagreb

While in Zadar, President Milanović commented on a municipal court ruling acquitting two citizens charged by police with insulting the Prime Minister. “When the police reported people who shouted insults at me in Knin, as the then Prime Minister I said: Don’t report people because of that. It would be good if the current Prime Minister said that,” President Milanović pointed out, adding: “I agree with such a court decision. That seems to me to be something that politicians should be able to live with.”

“That’s for the Prime Minister to decide,” President Milanović said in response to journalists’ questions on how clever it was to keep ministers in the Government who are under investigation. “I spoke about it being wrong and dangerous for the State Attorney’s Office to arrest ministers and deprive them of their liberty. We are not talking about the process here, but about deprivation of liberty, simply put – about arrest. Arresting a minister is out of the question without the consent of the Government. A minister must have at least equal immunity as MPs. A number of people you have barely heard of have such immunity, and ministers do not, the Prime Minister does not,” added President Milanović.

He also commented on the fact that the forensic findings in the case of an unmanned aerial vehicle crash in Zagreb have not been published yet. “The Prime Minister should call a news conference and show reporters the findings of the Ivan Vučetić Forensic Science Centre, whose reports are in 90 percent of cases evidence in court. They can also make mistakes, but there is no greater authority for that except of course for the HDZ,” said President Milanović.

Noting that the investigation would not result in a criminal report or an investigation against a specific person, since this case is about a national security threat, President Milanović emphasized that it would be “more normal to form an expert commission without representatives of political parties to give their view and investigate the case.”