Gajic: "Reasons for his release are purely legal and have nothing to do with Vesic's hunger strike"

Photo: Antonio Ahel/ATAImages

People's Party (Narodna Stranka) leader Vladimir Gajic says that the detention of former Minister of Construction Goran Vesic ended because the evidence collected so far does not indicate that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between Vesic's actions and the collapse of a part of the entrance to the Novi Sad railway station, which killed 15 people.

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"The reasons for the termination of his detention are purely legal and have nothing to do with Vesic's hunger strike. The end of detention calls into question Vesic's criminal responsibility and this is a step farther away from an indictment being raised against him. There is no cause-and-effect relationship between Vesic's attendance at the opening of the (reconstructed) station, the fact that he did not issue a permit and the canopy falling, because it would have fallen even if Vesic had not been at the opening and had issued a permit," Gajic told Blic television.

He added that, "if the canopy fell because the Railway Infrastructure of Serbia did not check the condition of the building, then it did not fall because Vesic did not issue a permit".

"These are two contradictory things," said Gajic, his party announced.

Gajic pointed out that the canopy would not have collapsed if the condition of the station's construction had been checked before the start of the reconstruction.

"It is prescribed to carry out an analysis of the condition of a structure when there is no original design, and there was none and it was found only recently. If they had done that, they would have found out that the reinforcement had failed by 40 percent, as was determined by laboratory analyses after the collapse. It's a snowball that started the avalanche," Gajic said.

He added that there was no order for anyone to examine the condition of the structure, and then everyone made a series of mistakes out of negligence.

"People are being publicly accused of murder, it's unbelievable," Gajic said.

The non-trial panel of the Higher Court in Novi Sad yesterday ended the detention of Goran Vesic, who was arrested after the tragedy at the railway station in Novi Sad.

The court's website said that the decision was made after the prosecution and Vesic's defense attorney appealed.

The court said that the order to conduct the investigation, as well as the evidence submitted by the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad in the case file, for now do not show reasonable suspicion that Vesic committed a serious crime against general safety, related to causing general danger, which is a necessary condition for any person to be detained.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)