ZAGREB, Oct 12, 2020 – Following an attempted murder of a policeman in St. Mark’s Square, where the buildings housing the government and the parliament are located, President Zoran Milanovic on Monday said that the current accessibility of the square was unacceptable and he urged higher security.
“The highest state institutions are there, it should not be a tourist destination, those institutions should be appropriately protected,” Milanovic said in a comment on the incident in which a 22-year-old man shot and wounded the policeman and later committed suicide in a nearby street.
Milanovic called on the government to protect St. Mark’s Square in an appropriate way, adding that “the only way to prevent incidents (like this one) is to physically prevent them.”
Asked by reporters whether he suggested the square should be made accessible only to people who work and live there, the president said that the issue should be addressed by professionals and that it was also a matter of common sense.
He said that he had phoned Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic around 11 a.m. and they concluded that a meeting of the Council for National Security would not be convened.
Milanovic went on to say that there had always been and would be acts of violence and called on the government, the police and the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA) to control the amount and dispersion of firearms which citizens possess illegally.
“The firearm used in the incident this morning is usually used by the Croatian Army, and such firearms must not be part of anyone’s privately owned weapons. In that regard, the government, the police and SOA enjoy my support,” the president said.
