Enlarge image
The Belgrade police protect the Mladic graffiti with massive forces
Photo: JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER / AFP
The Serbian police briefly arrested an activist on Tuesday evening for throwing eggs at a mural of the convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic in downtown Belgrade.
According to Reuters, a video posted on Instagram shows how several plainclothes police officers identify themselves after throwing eggs and lead the woman away.
Her arrest sparked protests from opposition and activists who tried to paint over the picture.
Riot police cordoned off the area.
The Belgrade police said in a statement that the officers did not protect the mural, but merely enforced the ban on gatherings.
This was imposed on the grounds that one wanted to prevent possible clashes between the activists and right-wing nationalists on the occasion of the International Day against Fascism and Anti-Semitism.
The Mladic graffiti put up by nationalists has long been causing tension in the city.
According to the Austrian newspaper »Der Standard«, the »Youth Initiative for Human Rights« had announced that it wanted to paint over it.
Mladic, now 78, led the Bosnian-Serb armed forces during the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995 and was convicted by the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for genocide and war crimes, including the murder of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
Many Serbs continue to see him as a war hero.
In 2010 the Serbian parliament passed a declaration condemning the Srebrenica massacre.
sol / AP / Reuters
