BELGRADE: Belgrade police on Monday arrested a man who approached a police station carrying a backpack with a crossbow, two days after a crossbow attack at the Israeli embassy in the Serbian capital, police said.
In a statement, police authorities said the man crossed a barrier in front of the station and, after being ordered to stop, hurriedly started to walk away. Officers then caught up with him and carried out a search.
“In his backpack, a crossbow with seven arrows, several knives, and a jar with firecrackers were found. Motives are being investigated and a search of his apartment is being conducted,” police said.
It said the suspect was not on the government’s list of potential “extremists,” without adding details.
Police said he claimed that he was “being pursued by the mafia and secret services.”
“A medical examination will be carried out, and further actions will be decided by the prosecutor,” Serbia’s police minister Ivica Dacic said in the statement.
Serbia has been on high alert since Saturday, when a member of a special police unit was shot in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy.
The officer then opened fire and killed the attacker, said Dacic, denouncing a “heinous terrorist act.” The officer remains in hospital recovering after undergoing surgery.
Authorities said the assailant was a Serbian convert to Islam. His wife, currently in Montenegro, is being questioned by police at Serbia’s request.
Belgrade police arrest man with crossbow two days after Israeli embassy attack
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Belgrade police arrest man with crossbow two days after Israeli embassy attack
- Serbia has been on high alert since Saturday, when a member of a special police unit was shot in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
