Security expert Bjegovic: Here's why Vucic traveled in the first car, "I see a different omission"

Security expert Miroslav Bjegovic said today, regarding the incident during the weekend, involving a car in which President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic was traveling, that such a security events are not coincidental, and assessed that this represents a certain security failure wither on the part of the complete security service or of that portion responsible for vehicle control.

"This is not a matter of coincidence, that the tire just exploded by itself. I think there are activities that influenced something like this. The only good thing in this situation is that the car was not on a highway when the speeds are much higher, probably then it would have overturned and the consequences would have been far greater in terms of the threat to life and health of the president," he told Tanjug.

Bjegovic said that after this incident, the good reaction of the security system has been that the protection of the president was raised to the highest level, until the facts about the event have been established.

Asked what procedures were in place and whether a protected person should sit in the middle car, Bjegovic said that although the practice is for the vehicle in which the protected person is transported to be in the middle of the convoy, this does not always have to be the rule because a malicious actor intending to endanger the protected person knows that they would be traveling in the middle vehicle.

He added that the fact that President Vucic was in the first vehicle in this case is not unusual, in some cases it is even desirable.

"What I see as a different type of omission is that, at the moment the convoy stops, when both the driver and the president's security get out, their attention in on the tire, their backs are turned toward cars arriving frontally. The video shows that a vehicle comes from the direction of the front of the convoy, which practically passed unnoticed," he stressed.

Bjegovic assessed that at that moment, the security service did not react properly and noted that it was a security failure that must not happen, considering that someone could also have been waiting in the bushes on the side of the road for the convoy to arrive.

According to him, given the current circumstances in the country, such attempts would not be surprising. Bjegovic mentioned a recent inident when a tree was felled onto a road along which the prime minister's motorcade was passing.

(Telegraf.rs/Tanjug)