Activist Aida Corovic was sentenced by a Serbian court to a fine of 100.000 Serbian Dinars (about 850 euros) because, according to the official explanation, she disturbed public order and peace by throwing eggs at the wall of a building in the center of Belgrade, with the fact that the verdict, by accident or on purpose, nowhere mentions that a large mural of support for the convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic was painted on that wall.
She is convinced that it is no coincidence that at no time, neither in the summons for the trial nor in the verdict, does it say that she targeted a mural with the image of a convicted war criminal and that it is quite certain that she would not have been convicted if she had thrown eggs at any other building.
Furthermore, Corovic pointed out that at the moment when she expressed her disagreement with celebrating a war criminal, she was defending the constitutional order of Serbia, while the state of Serbia itself was violating that order.
That is why, Corovic adds, the court was not allowed to write in the verdict what she was actually aiming at, because it is clear that such a verdict would be overturned.
Corovic assessed that the court passed a completely meaningless verdict only to remove responsibility and to “behave condescendingly towards the authorities in Belgrade”.
Moreover, she added that the verdict sends a message to the region, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Split, and a large number of cities in Kosovo, that the wars of the nineties are not over, “because the same team that created and financed the wars, and that was behind all that horror, is still in power in Serbia, except for Slobodan Milosevic”.
In the end, Corovic said that she would appeal the verdict to the Court of Appeal and added that she hoped that there would be “someone more intelligent” in that court to either let the case expire or to issue an acquittal.
“If that doesn’t happen, I’m absolutely ready not to pay the fine and I’m ready to go to prison very gladly. This is not my shame, I protected the constitutional order of Serbia and its laws, and I’m ready to serve the prison sentence for that. How fortunate that there are more people who are ready not to pay various fines, so let’s see how Aleksandar Vucic’s regime will react to that,” Corovic concluded, N1 reports.
E.Dz.
